Climbing Black Mountain
- charlesjromeo
- 4 days ago
- 5 min read
I was on fire. Young and strong, I pushed hard up the five steep miles to Pine Creek Lake, looked around, figured out which peak was Black Mountain and set off. I clambered up steep terrain over lots of loose boulders, then a stretch of meadow and in no time at all, I was on top. Only now that I was on top, did I notice that I wasn’t standing on the tallest mountain in the basin. I had missed it … by a lot.
That was in 1981. I started that hike with my buddy Huk and his brother’s -in-law, Joe and Ed. They though were carrying full packs to camp at the lake, I only had a day pack, so I cruised up ahead of them. I’m sure I had a map, I always carried maps, but that’s no guarantee of getting things right. A few degrees turned this way or that and I’m off by a mountain or two. When I got back to the lake, they were in the middle of setting up camp. Huk pointed the correct mountain out to me. “Yeah, I figured that out.” But it was too late, my time and energy were spent.
Pine Creek is a large, pretty blue lake that sits at 9,000 feet. Black is an impressive looking mountain that rises on the south side of the lake. It has the look of a curled fist with a thumb to the side. In the 1980s, permanent snowfields outlined the thumb and the area below the sheer cliffs that are its rocky fist. It’s a beautiful peak, though the snowy accents, which emphasized its structure, now vanish by late August. A direct assault up its face requires technical gear, but there is a way around.
I returned next summer with a different Ed. We grunted our way up to Pine Creek Lake, took a short break then started climbing to the ridge west of the peak. It’s a steep mix of meadows, scree and boulder fields. We made the ridge, but a storm was moving in. Not wanting to be denied, I pushed us to move fast. We scrambled along the ridge until we were on top of the thumb; the storm was now on top of us; thunder echoed around us, a bolt of lightning blasted the ground nearby. We hit the deck. In Ed’s eyes I saw the fear I felt. We bolted off the thumb, along the ridge and dropped into the basin. It poured; deafening thunderclaps echoed off the basin walls. There was nowhere to hide, so we kept descending through driving rain. Down in the forest close to the lake we found an overhanging rock that offered shelter. The storm drew its last breaths a few minutes later. We headed to the lake to dry ourselves out on the large pillows of granite that bound its foot.
In 1984 I was back again with Eric this time. We were in graduate school together, and excessive partying on a Friday night was not out of consideration. It was Saturday morning. I picked Eric up at 7. He didn’t look too good. Eric was extremely athletic; I generally struggled to keep up with him. Not today. Pine Creek Lake is a hike that is best not taken when one is hungover. I have to give him credit, he blew chunks once on the climb to the lake, but he made it there. He was a sweaty alcohol stinking mess, but he made it. He laid out on that smooth granite. He wasn’t going any farther. I left him there with the keys to my truck and headed up. It was a beautiful mid-summer day in the 1980s. We didn’t have many 90 degree days back then, just gorgeous weather, 70s during the day, we needed light jackets every night.
I knew the route; I bagged Black Mountain. It was a big climb nearly 6,000 feet from the trailhead to the top of the 10,950-foot peak. Working around the thumb presented some challenges, but nothing technical. I didn’t take pictures back then. I sat and just tried to absorb the view. One thing I’ve held in my memory all these years was the sharp aretes of the Mount Cowen massif a few miles to the south.
Another is the view east. Black stands sentinel, along with Mount Cowen and other giants, above Paradise Valley at the western edge of the 943,648-acre Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness. To the east is a virtual infinity of mountain ridges. Pilot and Index Peaks are impossible to mistake; the rest are a jumble of ridges with peaks and passes.
When I got back to the lake, I wasn’t surprised to find Eric gone. I made quick work of the hike down to my truck, racing a thunderstorm for the last mile—I won, by seconds. Eric climbed from the back to the front and we headed home.
Looking east from the peak: Normal focal length; telephoto with Index and Pilot Peaks in the background
It was 35 years before I went up there again. I brought my buddy Jeremy to Pine Creek Lake in 2019 to show him the basin. Neither of us were in shape to climb the peak. I was only in Montana for a few weeks, and Jeremy was out for a short vacation from DC. We were both too busy with our work lives to be able to pull off a day that big.
My son-in-law Chris and I have been doing some big days in the past few years. This was our first one in 2026. We both did the Ridge Run eight days earlier and were looking to put some of that training to use for play. In my dreams, we ran to the lake and continued jogging to the peak. In reality the trail is an impossible mix of boulders, roots, rubble and downed trees and is too steep for my running abilities—it climbs more than 800 feet per mile over the last four miles. The two of us and Forest, Chris’s dog, hiked most of it and we hiked up the peak. There were some class three moves as we neared the peak that Chris was sure Forest would balk at, but he made them look easy. Chris was nervous when Forest got ahead of us going down, but he followed the exact trail he took going up. Good nose on that boy.
It was a great day. We again had thunder and rain on the way down. We got wet but we beat the worst of it. Storms are a thing in the mountains. But the most important thing is that this time I got pictures.
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