Black Peak

Black Peak is the 13th most prominent mountain in Washington and a classic scramble objective. Access to the peak is off of the mega-popular Maple Pass Loop trail, which I had hiked before on my very first visit to the North Cascades in 2019 and again in 2020. I didn’t know the name of the peak back then, but I do remember seeing Black from the trail and wondering what it would take to climb it. So it was a cool full-circle moment to be coming back to find out.

Black Peak wasn’t actually our top choice for the weekend, since Tim and I were hoping to use the glacier travel skills we’d just learned on one of the more famous glaciated North Cascades giants like Eldorado or Shuksan. The weather forecast for those peaks was questionable though and we we turned our eyes eastward to Black. As a general rule in the Cascades, there’s less and less precipitation as you go eastward, since storms coming from the west dump out most of their moisture on the western mountains.

Black Peak is usually scrambled later in the summer when things are more melted out. I could only find a couple of spring trip reports online, both from skiers. From what I could gather, the scramble on the final summit block could be sketchy with snow. Therefore I went in with low expectations of reaching the summit.

This time our friend Rio would be joining Tim and I. Rio is a good deal more experienced than us and it was great to be having him along!

We weren’t sure how much snow to expect, and were surprised to find several feet of snow on the ground as we parked in a small cutout on the side of the highway. The trail was nowhere to be seen, and it drizzled lightly as we chose our own adventure up the hill. Eventually we did find some melted out patches of the trail, but it was mostly still tedious, snow-covered sidehilling terrain. For readers considering this scramble in the spring, I would recommend skipping the sidehill trail and staying low to Lake Ann before ascending Heather Pass.

When we got to Heather Pass, the rain had stopped, sun peeked out, and I was suddenly sweating like crazy. After leaving the shade of the forest, the snow was also getting wet and mushy, which would be the theme of the rest of the trip. Rio put his skis on while Tim and I put on snowshoes and we started the long and unavoidable sidehill traverse towards Wing Lake. Sidehilling mushy snow in snowshoes was pretty cumbersome since the snowshoes kept sliding downhill. Rio’s skis performed better since they could edge effectively.

We aimed for a col on Black Peak’s south ridge. We saw a lot of debris from old wet-loose avalanches in the bowl below the col, but evaluated that current conditions were safe enough to keep going. Ascending the bowl got fairly steep and slow-going, and when we finally topped out, we’d entered the clouds and couldn’t see much. Anyway, views or not, we’re also peakbaggers so we ditched our skis and snowshoes and dutifully started the easy scramble up the dry rock of the south ridge.

This pleasant dry stretch didn’t last long, though, and soon enough we were back to wallowing around in steep mushy snow. This was quite time-consuming. Thanks to Tim and Rio for doing most of the trail breaking up this section!

Eventually we topped out the posthole hell and found ourselves at the base of the summit ridge. The ridge scramble looked pretty spicy, and I was already half-expecting to turn around here based on the trip reports I’d read. Rio thought it would go though, and we decided to give it a try.

The standard summer scramble route traverses north of the ridge before doubling back to the summit. We didn’t go that way though, since Rio found a nice way to gain the ridge directly from the south. For once, I was glad for the mushy snow. I think this scramble would have been quite a bit dicier if the snow had been firm.

After that, the crux turned out to be an exposed gap in the ridge that we needed to cross to reach the true summit. That move was a bit intimidating, and I watched Rio and Tim cross first before mustering up the nerve to carefully butt-scooch over.

We couldn’t see a damn thing on the summit, but enjoyed some snacks before reversing the scramble back off of the summit ridge and down to the south col.

Back down at the col the weather had cleared up significantly and we finally got some nice views of Goode Mountain to the west, the highest peak in North Cascades National Park. Despite its height, Goode is apparently not visible from any road, as the view is always blocked by other mountains. We took an extended break here to enjoy the views and snap some pictures.

Now, it was really time for Rio’s skis to shine as he zipped away down the mountain. At least Tim and I got some glissading down the bowl but otherwise plodded along slowly to catch up while Rio waited down by the lake. We repeated the catch-up routine a couple more times before splitting up one last time at Heather Pass. Credit to Rio for agreeing to ski with some slow-shoers! Lots more sidehilling and steep snow veggie scrambling ensued until we were finally back at the car.

Black Peak as a spring scramble was a nice adventure, and the best part was that we didn’t see anyone else all day - good luck getting that in summer! The area is beautiful in summer as well though and I wouldn’t mind a repeat to get some actual summit views.