We, a group of 6, day hiked black peak. We arrived at Rainy pass around 8:30am. The trail to heather pass was easy. Then we had to dropped about 400ft and crossed the boulder field to reach Lewis lake. You could stay high or low to cross the boulder field.
There is a boothpath on the climber's right, I.e., north side, to pass Lewis lake. Then you could follow the path all the way to Wing lake to avoid crossing boulder field. You need to cross a creek in between.
From Wing lake, the path to the col on the south ridge was obvious with all lose rock. The snow field was short and we didn't use any traction. After that, we faced the worst part of the trip, the steep scree field. Once we made to the col, the path along the south ridge was obvious.
However, when we were close to the summit, there were multiple paths with carins, which could cause confusion. We went to a steep gully in the middle and it turned out to be the wrong one, then we found the correct one on the left side. After we reached the false summit, we continued to the NE ridge side until we saw no more carins. There was a small chimney to climb up a ledge, then a final class 4 move to get us to the top of the summit.
We didn't stayed long at the summit and started to descend. It was slow to get back to Wing lake because of the loose rock and we were a large group. We used headlamps for 15 minutes to hike out in darkness and got back to our car around 8:20pm. A long but beautiful day!
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