Today at around 3:20 I reached the summit of Diamond Peak, in Lassen National Park, at an elevation of 7,968 ft. The trek to the summit was 2.5 miles and involved over 1,800 vertical feet of climbing. The weather, while not great, was good enough that would could reach our goal of the summit.We started at around 9:30am and proceeded snowshoeing up the road from the visitor center, heading toward the "Ranger Cutoff Trail 1." Once reaching that first checkpoint the real climbing began as we started to ascend quickly to the final altitude of 7,968 ft. For the first part we had a trail to follow that appeared to have been traveled sometime in the past few days, later in the trek however we had to begin on untracked snow on our way to the summit. For most of the time I took the lead on the climb, deciding our route to avoid possibilities of avalanche as much as possible as well as packing down the snow to make way for those to follow. Later around 400 vertical feet from the summit we stopped for a quick lunch, before the final push to the summit. After our lunch the snow became once again harder to travel, as I once again took the lead. The ridge began to narrow as we gained altitude and the slopes on either side continued becoming more steep and unforgiving. At last, we were ready for the final 100 foot push the summit, this area of the mountain was extremely prone to avalanches, due to the steepness of the slope and other conditions. We then proceeded to climb one by one to the peak, climbing on a ridge only about 4-5 feet wide with extremely steep slopes on either side, one false step and you would be sliding over 500 feet down the mountain and most likely triggering an avalanche. 8 of the 11 who started made it to the final altitude of 7,968 ft and we stayed just a few moments after the final person reaching the summit before I proceeded to be the first to begin the descent. Ice axe in had I was ready to descend the ridge that we just barely made it up, then about 30 feet down I lost my footing and began sliding, and not straight down the ridge but rather toward the northern face, immediately attempting to self arrest i was successful and soon descending on foot once again, later to need to self arrest a few more times before reaching the spot where we had lunch. Once there I had consumed all 64 oz. of water I carried for the trip and had some time before the group would catch up to me so proceeded to setup my stove and melt snow to get another 64 oz. of water which was enough to get down the mountain. On the way down we made very good time as I once again led the group, trying to push them a little bit on the final segment of our journey.
