Peter and I departed Seattle at 5am and left the car at 8am for a quick ski tour up Black Peak. Since Peter had been up Black Peak before, we made an error in only snapping photos of the guidebook beta and not looking at the map carefully off the bat. We followed the summer trail for the first half mile and quickly realized the error of our ways as we 'shwhacked our way through the forest. Thankfully, we got back on track at the plateau below Lake Ann. Whoops!
From there, we made fast progress up and over Heather Pass. It was pretty warm and the snow was relatively soft, but the side-hill ski over to Lewis Lake went fine. We put the skins back on here and recommenced huffing and puffing our way up, passing Wing Lake at about 11am.
We only had to boot a small section up to the South ridge col and were on top of it with a great view to the West of Glacier, Goode, Logan, and Forbidden at noon. Recent warm weather had baked much of the ridge, so we booted up rock for a ways before finding a boot pack in the snow-filled gully to just below the summit.
The scramble up the ridge in ski boots was engaging and fun and the view was phenomenal. We had been worried about the snow on the way down, but cloud cover and a light breeze kept things from getting too wet and heavy. The couloir ski was great and the rest of the way out went quickly with continuous snow to the car. We were back at the car by 2:30pm or so, which seemed pretty quick despite our first mile or so being off the beaten path.