Distance: 10.1 mi.
Elevation Gain: 4800 ft.
Avalanche danger is Washington was looking pretty high over the weekend and there were even some special warnings issued due to the danger and the fine weather drawing people to the outdoors. There has been significantly less late season snow in Oregon however and there is generally very low avalanche danger. I had Diamond Peak on my radar for a few years now from seeing various trip reports over the years and this seems like the perfect time. A recent report indicated the road is snow free to within 1-2 miles of the Pioneer Gulch Trailhead.
We left Seattle at about 5 for the long drive and fought through traffic in Tacoma and past JBLM, as is almost always the case. Beyond Olympia it was pretty easy. Road NF-21, off of OR-58, was paved the entire way with some occasional bumps. Despite the windy road and darkness we were able to make up a lot of time on Google’s driving estimate. We made the turn off onto NF-2149, which was gravel but also very smooth. We arrived at the first snow patches which we couldn’t make it through at 4,000′ just before midnight, 1.1 miles before road NF 2160. We had some beers and settled into our hatchback, bivy, and tent respectively.
We awoke with the sun after a cold night’s sleep. We had some breakfast, repacked, and started carrying/skinning intermittently up the road just before 7. Arriving at the trail, we could see a lot of dirt yet. We ended up having to carry skis until probably 5000′. From there we enjoyed pretty enjoyable skiing in open forest, just heading directly for the mountain. At about 6500′ we had to get on the SW ridge. Skinning was a challenge here as there were howling winds, the snow was quite icy, and there were steeper bumps along the ridge. We ended up carrying again until about 7600′ where we took a good snack break to try to let the snow soften some. After this break 3 of us switched to ski crampons while Rodrigo continued to carry.
Once atop the ridge we enjoyed amazing views and easy skinning to the true summit. This is a massive mountain and there are so many good looking bowls to ski. We arrived at the summit just before noon and soaked in the viewed while enjoying some beers and waiting for the snow to soften. We hung out until 1:15 when we finally encountered another group (also from Seattle) and the snow seemed to be approaching peak corn. We headed down the SW bowl of the peak and thoroughly enjoyed this amazing face. It may have been 40 degrees at its steepest but was such a beautiful and smooth 25-35 degrees for at least 1500′. It is on my favorites list to date.
The amazing fun eventually tuned into easy tree dodging and then eventually some flats and awkward traversing to get over a small ridge back to our up tracks. Once over the ridge we found some tight trees with limited snow but managed to eventually get our way back down to better areas we came up. We had to eventually carry again about 5000′ and met the road a little way south of the trailhead. We had fun down the road and after a few walking sections finally made it back to the cars at about 3:15. We all decided we had so much fun we wanted to try to have some more fun skiing on Sunday. We drove to Bend to hang out with some friends of mine and ski Mt. Bachelor the next day.
(Download the free Gaia GPS app on your phone to view tracks and then get a Gaia GPS membership if you want offline access. Discount below!)
Recommended brew: Deschutes Royal Fresh Imperial IPA
Gear Used:
- Avalanche beacon/shovel/probe
- Backcountry boots/skis/skins
- Day pack
- Glacier glasses
- GPS
- Helmet
- Ski Crampons
- Trekking poles
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