White Fish Trail to Diamond View Lake

10.4 miles of hiking • 1250' elevation gain •

We wanted to hike into Diamond Peak Wilderness and get a good view of the snow capped mountains. A bit of research led to the Whitefish Creek trail and ending at Diamond View Lake.

The drive to this TH was on decent roads and finding the White Fish Horse Camp, where the trail began, was straightforward. However, the TH wasn't obvious, and we had to drive around the horse camp loop to find it. The TH was a bit hidden, but located near an outhouse.

It was a very hot day and this trail had smaller trees that didn't block out the light effectively. In addition, the trail was quite dry and we were kicking up quite a bit of dust.. Whitefish Creek had some water flow within the first mile or so of the TH. After that, the creek was bone dry! Only rocks remained in the creek bed up to Diamond View Lake. I have to admit that we were a bit tired from the previous days of hiking (and high temperatures), so we had a slow time heading out toward the lake.

We reached a pond at about 4.5 miles out, and also got a second wind. At this point, the tree cover was much better and it was cooler, helping us with our energy levels. I started to smell some smoke as we reached Diamond View Lake. It turned out we met our first hiker, and he was painting the gorgeous view of Diamond Peak from the east side of the lake. The view from Diamond View Lake is spectacular and we spent some time taking pictures, and also talking with the hiker/artist. We had a great hike and would like to visit again when there's a bit more moisture on the ground.