Basic Alpine Climb - Black Peak/South Ridge

We started out hiking at 4:45am, planning for a long day.  Everyone held a very quick pace and were cheerful the entire day despite fog and some cold rain.

The talus fields were not as bad as they seemed in some of the trip reports I had read, and the snowfield was small, low angle, and avoidable.  We brought ice axes, but never pulled them out.

Heading up the slope to the ridge, there is a rock obstruction that can be navigated around left or right.  We chose right going up.  There was a bit of loose rock, but with smart movement, the group could easily mitigate risk.  We gained the ridge at 8:15am and dropped some gear.

Heading up, the ridge is class 2-3 scramble through a multitude of subsidiary columns of rock to all sides, concluding with a short section of class 4.  We set a hand line for this section on the rappel rings at the top, which people appreciated, but had it not been wet, this group may not have found it necessary.

We reached the summit at 9:15am.

The weather wasn’t great and the view minimal, so we only stayed on summit about 5 minutes before heading back down.

We got back to the ridge at 10:45am, grabbed our stashed items and headed down.  This time we took the South side of the rock obstruction to get off the ridge and found that the rock-fall was significantly worse.  So we traversed skier’s left toward the less steep terrain.

The way back was enjoyable and the sun greeted us on the hike down from the pass.

We reached the cars at 1:30pm.

This was a beautiful hike and a fun climb, much more-so than I expected for the low number of trip reports I had found.  Partial trails and cairns can be found the entire route to the summit.

Great climb!