June 7, 2003, Diamond Peak

Diamond Peak is a nice peak with a lot of terrain that begs for a couple of days to ski it all.  Cyril, Amar, and I were camped up the road from the Corrigan Lake trail.  The sunrise woke us and we staggered awake and began to pack for the day.  Amar decided some sleep was in order for him for this day so we left him where he lay (asleep in his car) and drove the short strech back to the Corrigan Lake trailhead.  We left hastily up the trail at ~7 which was bare for about a mile or mile and a half.  We could have skinned but since we hadn't already put them on at the car we kept booting up snow and then sand, scree, and rock on the ridge.  It seemed to me that the rock was a little better here than on the other peaks.  We summited at 10:25 to see a group of telemarkers down below coming up the next ridge over.  I believe they told me they had left from Crescent (i think that's the name - not totally sure) Lake at 5.  It was a longer approach, but they were going to ski a more east-facing line that would lead them back in the direction of their car.  Diamond Peak is shaped kind of like an H with the main faces (east & west) like the long lines, and a ridge between the summit (on the W side)and another high point (on the E side) making the short line of the H.  This creates a lot of hidden bowls and faces that you don't see until you get to the summit.  These inner bowls (NE and SE i believe) looked like they had more snow than our line back to the car on the SW bowl, but our line was pretty long and had a good pitch for most of the way.  At the bottom of the bowl we traversed back skier's right (NW) to get back over to our ascent track.  We skied as far as we could and then since Cyril was a couple minutes ahead of me I headed right for the trail and started tromping my way back.  I must have had my head down because i missed the lake (where Cyril was taking a swim) and plodded on to the car, surprised that I had made it first.  He made it soon enough and we headed off.  I think if I go back to Diamond Peak, I will definately take at least 2 days and ski all of those lines.