Cliff Lake, Binocular bounce

I spent a great afternoon in mid May at Cliff lake doing the Binocular bounce tour.  The basic idea is simple: traverse out to Binocular peak, then bounce back, skiing as many North facing bowls as possible.  There is enough skiing right around Cliff lake to keep one busy, but this tour is a great way to see a lot of country, and the route finding is just tricky enough to make it an engaging outing.

Looking out from the low pass at the beginning of the day.
Binocular peak is in the far background.  

I started off by climbing to the low saddle directly below Cliff eagle peak and schussed down the ramp to the next peak east.  From there I got on the Stateline and followed it out to Binocular peak.  It was a bit of a slog, but I was poised on Binocular soon enough, ready to bounce back.  Binocular, unnamed bowl above Hidden lake, unnamed bowl behind Eagle cliff, and the Diamond chute to return home.  Each run had good snow and skied well.  I took short breaks and pushed at a solid moderate pace, and each run took about 45 minutes.  Soon enough, I was working through tricky thin snow at the bottom of the Diamond chute.

Binocular peak.

Looking back at the Binocular peak run.  This time I skied the obvious run right off the high point.

Unnamed peak above Hidden lake.

Looking back at the Hidden lake run.

Fun skiing at the top of the Diamond chute.

One of the nice aspects of skiing at Cliff lake is the delightfully quick egress, and sure enough I was back in flip flops about ten minutes after starting the dry land egress from Diamond lake.  Somewhere a little north of 5,000 vert, done in just under 5 hours car to car.

Approximate route.