Diamond Peak: Built by Hand

By Lee Koch, former Director of Sales & Marketing, IVGID (1986 – 1998)

There may never be another story like this one in the ski business, and it may even be hard to believe, yet the expansion of Ski Incline into Diamond Peak was literally built by hand.

Turn back the clock to the summer of 1987 when Ski Incline finally received approval (under a building moratorium) to commence what at the time was the largest ski resort expansion in America that summer.

Trail crews building the upper mountain had to carry all of their equipment up the mountain by hand.

The financial investment: $10 million. The physical investment: priceless.

The good news is that the resort received the thumbs up to proceed; the bad news is that the expansion had to be built by hand, with no trucks or large equipment allowed on the upper mountain except for one run – what we know as Crystal Ridge today.

“Picture if you will: With the sun yet to rise over the top of the Eastern Sierra, a mountain crew of approximately 12 men gathered at the base of Ski Incline around 6:00 a.m.” said Marty Koch, former mountain manager. “By 7:00 a.m. all had packed their chainsaws, oil, extra chains, shovels and other necessary tools, water bottles and lunch sacks and took their first steps on a long hike to the top of the expansion, only to return 10 -12 hours later to do it all over again, all summer long. That was just for clearing trails.”

According to Koch, it was a similar story for those who handled the rigging and felling of the trees, which were then airlifted out by two large helicopters run by Siller Aviation.

We all appreciate the beauty of the granite boulders that remain in place today, yet there were hundreds that needed to be removed so the trails could be cleared. As with the trail development process, the equipment needed to remove the boulders was all hauled in on the backs of the crew.

“From 80-pound rock drills to miles of detonation cord, dynamite, and pounds of prill – all of it arrived on-site from top to bottom on the backs of the mountain crew,” Koch explained.

Here’s another visual. Except for the top and bottom terminals, all the holes for the tower bases for the Crystal Quad chairlift were dug and blasted by hand. As part of the project, an underground 40,000-volt power line was installed to the top of Crystal Ridge.

When all was said and done, the ski resort had doubled in size and vertical and was ready for the community to enjoy…For a brief 16 days that winter due to unseasonably warm weather at that elevation.

Fortunately, the crew managed to rent pipe and power to run a temporary snowmaking line up Crystal Ridge; all of which embedded the need to invest in a more significant snowmaking operation to supplement our 20+ year old existing system in the years to come.

It was a year for the history books, indeed.