One thing off the bat:
You may look at the WTA reported mileage and elevation gain as doable in a day C2C (car to car) from the Maple Pass TH all the way to the summit of Black Peak and back, but keep in mind the terrain can be a bit rough and confusing to navigate from Wing Lake to Black Peak, so may take more time than other benchmarks.
I absolutely needed GPS to keep me on track during the main ascent of Black Peak. Wore a climbing helmet.
Was able to do this on a Monday and was not a complete zoo of folks going for the ever popular Heather/Maple Pass Loop like it would be on a weekend. Sunny, smoke free, and bug free in crisp autumn temps. Parking lot looks newly opened and was full when I rolled in around 800 AM, but plenty of roadside parking just outside.
Route up to Heather Pass easy along the Maple Pass Trail. The boulder field in between Heather Pass and Lewis Lake doesn’t have many good paths, despite occasional cairns, and the rocks are slippery even in dry weather due to morning condensation. Lot of sharp ridges. I slipped and put in a deep gash in my knee that later in the evening required stitches for at Sedro Woolley hospital. Shoutout to the nearby hiker who had duct tape and gauze (I didn’t have my med kit in my light running backpack) that I was able to patch up. Despite the shock value of the wound, I wanted to see how far I’d get, and turn back immediately if the pain hobbled my movement too much, but it surprisingly did not. Was slower for sure though.
Path from Lewis Lake to Wing Lake easy to follow and had a mix of larches that were just turning, to some full golden. Some red foliage peppered throughout. Saw some blueberries, but not sure if they haven’t sprouted much, or had already been picked clean. The Green Mountain hike I did just a day earlier had tons more. Wing Lake had a couple of tents and people fishing for rainbow trout.
Now on to Black Peak. My pics are for this. The rocky gully from Wing Lake up to a saddle is unpleasant with scree that gets even more slippery the higher you get, and it’s a pretty close to vertical scramble to ascend up to the saddle. There are some rough trails in the scree that differed from my AllTrails GPS route, but near the crest of the saddle it’s pretty much choose your own adventure and be mindful of kicking rocks down on anyone below.
Once ascend the saddle, the scramble up a gully begins shortly. Cairns are present, but sometimes difficult to spot. Any semblance of a trail is difficult to follow. I kept having to take out my phone to make sure I was roughly along the GPS path, which slowed me down considerably. I got off trail a couple of times and had to double back before trying to “keep going” and getting myself in a worse predicament.
There is a bit of a false summit about 10-20 minutes from the real summit, which you can view a straight column ahead of you from this point. Honestly, most of the views are pretty good here and like the actual summit, so no shame in turning back here if you find the scramble up to the true summit more than you are comfortable with. There’s a lot of debate on if the scrambling here is Class 3 or 4. I’d say mostly Class 3 with a very short Class 4 move. The exposure I felt wasn’t as bad as some previous reports made it sound like, but you would definitely get hurt if you fell. By “exposure not as bad” I mean it wasn’t completely as “airy” as I thought, so I’m wondering if I took a different route somehow. Regardless, it is definitely a bit of climb you have to be comfortable with. You can see the pics below where someone’s put a short rope to ascend a particularly slick and smooth part of the rock right before the summit. The handholds for the short climb are decent and reassuring. (EDIT: looking back at earlier reports, like this one -- https://www.wta.org/go-hiking/trip-reports/trip_report-2024-10-15.131136429028 -- it mentions you can avoid going up the rope/rappel section I have a pic for below, and that solid Class 4 moves are available on a better ascent if you keep traversing right. I completely missed this and had gone straight up the rope route.)
Didn’t stay too long at the summit as reached it kinda late and needed to get all the way back to the TH before lost too much light. Lost trail again on the descent a couple of times and had to backtrack. It’s just tough to say since it’s all mostly a scramble. The trail can resemble some dirt path every now and then.
Other notes, if you’re going to camp overnight at Wing Lake and attempt Black Peak the following morning, I was told by another hiker exiting that the rocks can get slick with frost, so be extra careful. Not sure if enough for microspikes. By the time I got there past noon, there were some wet rock and very light snow dusting in spots still lingering.
In general, if you’re going for Black Peak, make sure you’re comfortable with scrambling. Wing Lake looks like a wonderful place to stay overnight as many backpackers were coming in as I was leaving back to my car.
825 AM : start at Maple Pass TH
1025 AM : Lewis Lake
1130 AM : Wing Lake
1240 PM : saddle before main ascent to Black Peak
140 PM : summit Black Peak
245 PM : back at saddle
330 PM : Wing Lake
620 PM : end TH
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