May 11, 2013, Black Peak

Becky and I toured up to Black Peak today...the weather was a mixed bag of overcast and sun, the snow ranged from shallow slush to 2' deep slush...no corn in sight, and most of the skiing from Lake Ann on up was pretty grabby...but it was nice to get up to Hwy20 and get some turns and views.

What I assume is the usual south chute (at least the one I've climbed before) was melted out to rock in a few spots, so we climbed an adjacent chute climbers left that still held continuous snow.  It was calf to knee deep booting up to the top of the chute that deposited us about 200ft below the true summit.  We called it a day at that point, not wanting to stumble along the summit block in our boots. 

Skiing down the top 1000ft was an exercise in sluff mgmt....ski cut- watch the piles of wet debris crash down the slope, then ski the bed surface.  It is getting pretty thin in spots...the chute we skied might be discontinuous pretty soon. 

pics added
1- nearing the col by Black Peak's south slope
2- booting up the south slope (a couple spots visible of discontinuous snow)
3- the narrowest bit on the climbers left chute that we went up/down