2016-01-01 - Diamond Head Ski
Ski tour with new friends from the Mountaineers Ski / Snowboard Mountaineering course. The ascent started as an easy skin up some XC trails. We turned off the Haney Meadow trail at 4700 and ascended the NE ridge to the bench at 5500', finding and using a skin track halfway up. Traversed climbers left from the bench and ascended the NE ridge / E slope to the top. Summit plateau was long and treed, so we found a nice view overlooking the west slope and ate lunch.
We descended, via skis, roughly back the way we came, avoiding the jaunt north to the bench.
The reason we took our ascent, instead of ascending where we ultimately skied, was to avoid any potential wind loaded slopes. The NE slopes were sheltered from the recent winds and turned out to be stable and well consolidated.
Large (4mm+) faceted surface hoar and some faceting just beneath the surface. Temperature inversion - warm and sunny at the top, frigid at the cars.
Read MoreWe descended, via skis, roughly back the way we came, avoiding the jaunt north to the bench.
The reason we took our ascent, instead of ascending where we ultimately skied, was to avoid any potential wind loaded slopes. The NE slopes were sheltered from the recent winds and turned out to be stable and well consolidated.
Large (4mm+) faceted surface hoar and some faceting just beneath the surface. Temperature inversion - warm and sunny at the top, frigid at the cars.
Skinning up some nice easy XC trails.
Turned off the trail into immediately dense forest.
Picking our way up the NE slope.
At the 5500' bench of Diamond Head.
Skinning up NE ridge of Diamond Head.
Diana coming up the ridge. Decent views (^_^).
Rest stop along the ridge, nice views!
Flat summit plateau turned into a winter wonderland.
Hey, look, more surface hoar.
Diana taking what is probably a wonderful picture of some snow.
Patrick and Diana going after it.
Kevin having a nice time of it.
Tour well done.
