Elevation Gain: 1,036m
Distance: 10.08km
Total Time: 10 hours 32 minutes
Date: August 8th, 2024
Diana Mountain is one of the few “tame” summits along the Nemesis Peak ridge system near the south west boundary of the Pantheon Range. It was first climbed in 1981 by a Seattle Mountaineering team and as far as I can tell has received no ascents since. Andrea and I had completed a successful first ascent of Culbert Crag across the valley two days prior and now had one rest day between us. We wanted to take advantage of the unbroken sunny weather, but also needed a break from complex technical terrain. I had spotted an obvious looking scramble line up the south ridge of Diana when we summitted Culbert Crag and now it was looking like the perfect outing.
Andrea was onboard and it looked like an easy approach so we set off on the 9th of August to make it happen. We left late in the morning and cruised down easy slabs to the north west of our camp. From there we made a long running traverse across a mix of glacial moraine, steep heather and slabs to reach the eastern bowl below Diana Mountain. We ascended into the bowl and then cut across the south east slopes above to gain the long running south ridge. Sure enough, it offered several hundred meters of tame boulder hopping.
While the boulders themselves were tame, half of the gaps between them were filled with large spider webs and it made for tricky navigation. The spiders had been doing a great job of keeping this zone bug free and so we put in the extra effort to dodge as many webs as possible. After an hour and a half we were standing on the summit. There was no cairn to be found, but we knew from the CAJ 1982 that the American party had reached the summit. It’s too bad though, it would have been fun to find a summit register somewhere.
Nonetheless, we were quick to get distracted with the plethora of new peaks we could not see from across the Valley. One peak in particular caught our eyes though. A massive tower flanked by steep vertical walls on all sides that was standing just 1.5km south east from Diana and quite close to our camp. It had been visible from all of our trips so far, but looked improbable. When sleuthing through maps before the trip I had discovered this peak (we’ll call it Trident Tower tentatively), was likely unclimbed. Seeing it in person on day one I sort of wrote it off. But now from Diana, a potential line had revealed itself. It was too far to tell, but in the back of our heads we were now thinking of making an attempt.
With some recon photos to pore over later, we set off down the ridge again and simply reversed our original track. We made camp before dinner and settled in for an evening of rest before an attempt on “Trident Tower” the following day.
