9/30/02
After doing Tomyhoi Peak, we went to bed Saturday night under crystal clear skies at Douglas Fir campground. "What rain?" we thought. Then, after about 1AM the heavens opened up in a big way. At this point the weather service forecast on our weather radio was still for clearing on Sunday evening (after not too intense precip) and looking good for Monday and Tuesday.
Woke Sunday morning and started on the drive to the Colonial Creek campground to set up for Black Peak on Monday. Made a REALLY cool stop at a grocery store in Sedro-Wooley to get some more food and found the power out . . . the emergency lights were on so we shopped under mood lighting. Weird that they were still allowing people into the store with total darkness in there. Probably not a lot of crime- sprees in Sedro-Wooley. Sunbreaks threatened the whole drive up so we felt pretty good about the weather situation when we arrived at the campground just after noon. We knew it had been snowing above about 7000 feet but our hope was that light snow and our route's southern exposure would take care of the snow on the route by the time we were climbing midday Monday.
"Wonder how much snow has fallen up high?"
After the morning sucker-hole sunbreaks, it then proceeded to rain for the next 18 hours with falling temps. We occupied the rest of the day Sunday doing some climbing on a small crag (that stayed remarkably dry under the forest canopy & thanks to a slight overhang) up the Thunder Creek drainage not too far from the campground.
The precip took a break by the next morning and peeks of blue began to show. Jon took a stroll to the edge of the lake where we were camped and spotted the snowline from the night before - a very disconcerting 2-3000 feet only above us. September 30th . . . nice. We decided to make the drive to Rainy Pass and stick our noses in it anyway . . . maybe it still only amounted to confectioners sugar that would melt off by noon.
The depth at Rainy Pass was only about a half-inch so we hitched our wagons with our fingers crossed and proceeded up the trail.
| Prepping gear at the trailhead at Rainy Pass. |
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The illusion continued as the route up to Heather Pass countoured up the southern exposure of a ridge high above Lake Ann, keeping the snow on the trail to a minimum. We did encounter a couple of spots as we rose in elevation with 2, 3, and sometimes 4 inches on the ground.
| Jon livin' the lie on the trail up to Heather Pass. |
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| Lake Ann nestled into a pretty stunning cirque. |
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We were at Heather Pass in no time and got our first look at Black Peak . . .
| "Hey Jon . . . I don't think it's going to go" |
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| A menacing banner cloud on the summit streaming to the east, and an even more menacing amount of snow. |
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After going over Heather Pass our exposure was now Northwesterly and the full amount of the storm was apparent. Three to five inches where we stood at 6200 feet. Black Peak's summit lies just short of 9000 feet. Between us and our intended camp for the night at Wing Lake was a few hours of hiking over a beautiful landscape - made nightmarish by the new snow coating on endless fields of talus. The summit was out. The overnight camp at Wing Lake was quickly ruled out. A salvage overnighter near Heather Pass was then slowly (& reluctantly on my part) ruled out as the clearing skies disappeared and it began to snow pretty heavily again.
| "Uhhh...Hey Jon . . . I still don't think it's going to go" |
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| Retreat. |
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Naturally peeks of blue sky were showing again by the time we reached the pass, though the high elevations were still clouded up. It was a good call - it continued to snow up high nearly all day from what we could see. We made a quick drive over to Mazama and bought some expensive gas and some insanely expensive beer, loaded up the cooler, and drove back up to Washington Pass to see if we could mix in some climbing for the rest of the afternoon.
| Liberty Bell from the North Side of Washington Pass - the flurries continuing. |
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| Jon rapping one of the short pitches we spent the afternoon on. |
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The climbing was fun - the views incredible - and the weather sort of surreal as snow continued to fall off & on, sometimes under brilliant sunshine.
| Another snow squall rolling in . . . |
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| . . . and giving way to sunshine 10 minutes later. |
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We made the drive back to the campground fully geeking on all the newly snow-covered peaks.... shades of skiing to come very soon!
Didn't get Black Peak this time - just another excuse to come back next year.