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| Page Type: Trip Report Location: Washington, United States, North America Lat/Lon: 48.52400°N / 120.815°W Date Climbed/Hiked: Oct 12, 2002 | Page By: leejams Created/Edited: Oct 14, 2002 / Object ID: 168756 Hits: 861 Loading... Page Score: 0% - 0 Votes Loading... Vote: Log in to vote |
The following trip report was posted to the WAC website
To see all the details goto: http://www.wacweb.org/Trips/TripReports/default.view?_mode=details&rowid=150
Trip: black peak
Posted by: lee coutermarsh
Date of Trip: 2002-10-12 00:00:00
Report:
Taking advantage of the great fall weather and the still open high roads. Nick frey and myself headed up to rainy pass on the N. Cascades Hwy to scramble up the South route of Black peak. Starting out on the lake anne trail at 8:30 it was cold with patches of snow even down at this lower elevation. At 1 mile you come to a fork and bear right up to heather pass and nice views of the route above and black peak straight ahead. From heather pass descend about 500 feet following the tree line which keeps you out of the loose boulder field, then quickly ascend what you just lost up to lewis lake and 5,700 feet with an outsanding camp. Note: if doing this route in 2 days I recomend camping here rather than wing lake higher up. When we were returning all the campspots at wing lake were taken, it was very windy and frigid, then when we arrived at this lower lake campspot, it was wide open no wind and much warmer. Plus it had a bunch of firewood with a fire pit in the center. From lew!
is lake up to wing lake the larch trees were golden, but missed them peaking by a couple weeks, beautiful none the less. When we arrived at wing lake 6,900 feet it was frozen over and about half inch thick. We spent to much time here breaking ice and winging it across like hockey pucks and amazed at how far they would slide (boys will be boys). After having lunch here, and then marveling at the task up above we decided we better get moving. The worst part of the trip was from wing lake up to the notch 8,000 feet,and with much scree, boulders, and choss (bring helmet). From the notch it is a 3rd class gulley scramble with loose rocks, the final notch is rated 4th class. Note: you can make this route much more interesting by avoiding the gulley/loose rock and whenever there is an option to go vertical take it and climb 4th to mid 5th class rock that improves as you go up. If you take this option you eventually come up to the knife ridge and extreme exposure. At one point I had!
one leg over the knife and at least 1,000 feet straight down to the north face glacier, with the other leg hanging over the other side and 60 feet down to the actual trail. Keep climbing to the false summit and then to the actual summit. Up on top the views were outstanding and could see deep in to B.C., the Sun was warm but the snow up there in the shadows wasn't melting so in the shade it was below freezing. There is a brand new summit register which we signed and noticed the shadows getting long so had to boogie. I think I read somewhere that it is 14 miles round trip. The climb down was uneventfull with a bunch of slipping on the choss but thankfully our ankles made it past this part. Note: guidebooks say bring axes and crampons, we didn't but the few snowfields we did cross were rock hard and pretty much tried to avoid those. Made it back to the car by 7:30 in headlamps. car to car about 11 hours, and that is spending time for lunch,ice play, and summit sunbathing.
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