Diamond Peak – East Ridge Scramble 8-12-23 – NW Adventures, Maps & GPS Tracks

Diamond Peak – East Ridge Scramble

I’ve had this route in mind since the first time I summitted Diamond Peak back in 2007. Since then I’ve come up to Diamond Peak a couple times with no intentions of doing the full east ridge. I’ve done ridges similar, so I knew it was going to be a long day…and it was. As far as I looked, I could not find any beta on this ridge route…we were on our own.

We started this adventure from the Pioneer Gulch trailhead at 7:20am. Weather forecast was calling for clear skies with a high temp in the mid 60’s on the ridge and mid 70’s at the trailhead. Of course, this time of year the smoke is the new norm, and there was plenty of it today.

The Pioneer Gulch trail is not your typical NF trail with mile long switchbacks, this trail goes straight up the mountain right from the trailhead. After crossing the Diamond Peak trail, the route goes cross-country straight up the mountain following a ridge to the false summit, where we caught the trail up to the true summit. It took us 4-hrs to climb the 4000’…not bad, but we still had a long way to go.

The East Ridge starts out in a northerly direction then curves to the east, terminating at the PCT trail, which we hiked for a bit over a mile before going cross-country through the beautiful forest back to the Pioneer Gulch Trail. This adventure took us just shy of 12-hrs car to car to go 11.6 miles and a total of 4670’ elevation gain. From the Diamond Peak summit to the end of the east ridge it took us 5-hrs, and another 3-hrs back to the trailhead. Long day!

The east ridge had many obstacles, many of which took time to work around. There were several times we thought we would have to drop down and traverse around some of the obstacles, but after exploring, we always found a way to stay on the ridge crest. Along the way we were always looking for a way to bail the ridge just in case we came to a place too technical…but that never happened. The ridge consisted of class 2/3 scrambling, with a few 4th class moves.

I’m glad I finally got this route done, and there is no better person to do it with than my adventure partner, my lovely wife, Deb.

Fun Shit!!

Starting out in the forest…

After a couple of miles we are above tree line, working our way up a ridge…

Looking back we can see the wildfire smoke. Looks like an inversion is holding the smoke down in the valleys…

Looks exciting huh?

At the false summit, looking at the true summit of Diamond Peak…

On the summit looking at the East Ridge route…

Looking off the NW side. Remnants of where a glacier once flowed down the mountain…

The view that I just couldn’t get out of my mind…

Our first obstacle

…not this way…

This way goes…

Still some nice snow patches on the north facing slopes…

Another work-around coming up…

Glacial Tarn off the north side…

Put your goat feet on for this one…

This Pika probably doesn’t see many humans in his neighborhood…if any.

Pretty cool rock with two keyholes…

This one was one of my favorites… Best rock on the mountain.

Solid basalt. 60′ on the uphill side and about 100′ on the downhill side. Too bad the pay to play is to high to come back and climb…

This was the last big obstacle on the ridge….

We found a spicy work-around that included a couple of shorth 4th class moves that got us up on a ledge that went all the way around with a couple of down climbs back to the ridge.