June 17, 2007, Black Peak

Tim, Tobae, Joe and I decided to get the goods before the weather turned.  Why is it called Rainy Pass?  Drove to TH Saturday night, it rained hard all night, but stopped around 5:30 am, just in time for us to get up and sneak up the trail around 6:30.  Pretty quickly up to Heather Pass and on to Lewis Lake.  Above Lewis it was very much white out conditions.  A map, compass, and GPS with plotted course made it pretty easy to get up to Wing Lake and the South Ridge of Black.  Couloirs from the ridge and up were covered in 6-10" of new snow on top of a slippery crust.  Postholing to the flat before the ledges traverse was quite a chore.  Scramble to summit was interesting with the new snow.  Luckily we had brought a 30 ft 6mm cord.  We anchored the cord and tied a runner onto it with a friction knot.  Nice to have the extra security when things are slippery!  This eased going up and down the summit block.  We were able to ski from the top of the highest couloir.  Snow was quite slabby and the couloir was narrow so attention was needed.  The bottom couloir and the ski from the ridge to Wing Lake was pretty darn ok.  The weather pretty much sucked the  whole day.  We did not get full on rained on, but it felt like we were in a mist with strong winds and snowing at times.  We felt we made the best out of not so great of a weather window ;-)