Home > Trip Reports > June 19-21, Black Peak - Mt Logan Area, NCNP

June 19-21, Black Peak - Mt Logan Area, NCNP

6/15/11
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Posted by cprahl on 6/23/11 3:23pm
Dave, Dwayne, Lucy and I skied a three-day loop tour around the Black Peak and Mount Logan areas between June 19-21. We found favorable, generally safe ski travel conditions above about 4,000€™ and good skiing on selected non-solar aspects depending on time of day. It was great to finally see the North Cascades changing to spring and early summer conditions.

We left Rainy Pass (2-3 feet of snow still at road-side; melting fast!) at about 4pm on Sunday (6/19) and skied to SE ridge-col bivy (~7920€™) on Black Peak above (E of) Wing Lake, arriving well before dark. We had fog and thick cloud cover above Heather Pass but easy travel given lack of direct solar.

On Day 2 (Tuesday, 6/20), we awoke above clouds to a spectacular sunrise and skied supportable, refrozen crust due south into Woody Creek basin €“ probably excellent corn from the summit if we had time to wait for the morning thaw. We skied down (W) Woody Creek drainage crossing over Grizzly and then to Fisher Creek with log crossings at 4300€™ and 4100€™, respectively. We ran out of snow at just before Fisher Creek and hiked 0.5 mi. S to toe of obvious, rounded ridge (Dream Ridge?) located 1 mi. N of N Fork Bridge Creek. 'Climbed the ridge (plenty o€™slide alder, a few cliff bands but okay travel), following lots of fresh bear tracks, once again on snow/skis at/above ~5,200€™. We skied up this ridge to summit of €œDream Peak€ (point 7910€™, est. 3:30p) with a minor cornice detour 200€™ below the summit. The ridge is a perfect gradient for casual, safe ski touring with spectacular views of all local and distant giants; Goode, Stormking, Logan, Black, Buckner, Forbidden, Ragged Ridge, etc. Here we aborted our original objective of skiing up Logan via the Douglas Glacier; a reasonable outing if we only had another day and/or cooler temps. The sun was intense and the snow had rapidly softened. This required aggressive & careful ski cutting, even on N aspects as we dropped N-NE to Fisher Pass and finally up to our second camp on €œSpectacular Ridge€ at ~6800€™.

Day 3 involved an early start with refrozen snow to ski around the cirque W of Indecision Peak to col S of Mt Arriva. Steep (up to 45 degree),  crampon travel necessary to reach this saddle with no morning sun. We then skied around the S slopes of Arriva to Silent Lakes to soak in the great view of Black Peak€™s active N face. A steep, 400€™ gully, down-climb (crampons; careful route selection can avoid much of this descent) was selected to drop into the head of the other (main) Fisher Creek, followed by a skin up to the N col of Fisher Peak (great ski terrain). We dropped around/over a 20+€™ cornice into upper un-named (Repulse Creek suggested), where we had great skiing to the valley floor and observed a massive (size 3+) avalanche fan that had recently released from the upper Fisher-Repulse basin. Fresh avy debris littered the valley floor to tree line in this basin. We then skied and 'shwacked out to Granite Creek (easy ski travel on E side of Repulse Creek; snow to 4200' on N side), crossing a log at ~4050€™ and skied up to Hwy 20 at ~0.75 miles upstream (SE) of Swamp Creek, reaching the road at about 4pm, and hitched back to Rainy Pass by 5p.

We were probably a week or two late to have full snow coverage in the lower elevation terrain (lower Woody-Grizzly-Fisher Creeks). Otherwise, the mid and high terrain is still ripe for good touring and fine skiing before 2-3p. Late-day travel was getting slow, with  3€ to 6€ ski penetration on solar aspects even up to 7,900€™.
Awesome Crispin, thanks for sharing the trip.  That sunrise on Black Peak sounds spectacular.

Way to get after it Crispin! Glad you are getting out.

Wow, cool trip in a pretty area. Thanks for the detailed report.

Here are a few more photos

Black Col
Dream Peak
Dream ridge from Spectacular ridge

What a great trip and nice TR.  Thanks!

Maybe it's just a personal thing, but there's something special about the country between Silent Lakes and Mt Logan. The picture from Spectacular Ridge brings the memories flooding back. Thanks.

Great report, thanks for the detailed info.  I skied the section from Silent Lakes to Logan along Spectacular Ridge a few years ago and agree with Lowell - it's one of the prettiest and least traveled places I've been in the Cascades.

Can you guys see where you went in this pic?



If so, I was dreaming of this slope when up on Goode a few months ago. It was gorgeous. I'm even more jealous if you guys had a chance to ski those awesome looking slopes.


J - Beautiful images of a cool & wild area. It would certainly be nice to drop these lines into N Fork Bridge Ck, but alas… On our recent outing, we toured up and across (R to L) the first (lowest) ridge shown in the foreground of your first image. This is what I referred to as “Dream Ridge”, after Lowell & Carl’s field designation of “Dream Peak” (Pt. 7910’) so many years ago. This is the ridge shown with yellow arrows in Dwayne’s 3rd photo post, as taken from “Spectacular Ridge” looking south toward Goode. You must have had a fine look at this terrain from Goode this winter. That trip sounded wild!

“Spectacular ridge” also shows up prominently in the middle your fist image. It is the humpy-bumpy feature behind (N-NE of) Dream Ridge. We ascended on one of the sparsely treed ribs and camped on the bumps, then traversed the ridge (L to R) the next day. This ridge provides some nice gully skiing down to Fisher Pass as I experienced in the traditional N to S approach to Logan (and onto Cascade Pass) in 2001. On our recent tour, we did not stray far from the ridge crests in search of turns. Time and snow stability dictated covering distance rather than dropping in. -Another tour perhaps, and when packs are filled with helium instead of food. CP

Bagged Black yesterday.  Always fun to find out who's tracks you were following.

Did you summit Black?  Whoever did previously, I would buy them a beer or three in thanks for the steps they kicked in.

I was up on Black on Thursday with Juya and wallowed up the route, Willie. Good times. Love that view off the summit. It's always nice.

Cprahl....always need excuses to return to places, especially nice ones.

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june-19-21-black-peak-mt-logan-area-ncnp
cprahl
2011-06-23 22:23:11