Wednesday June 18, 20.7mi/33.3km

Diamond Spring (952.7/8330ft) to Peak 9023 (973.4/8950ft) (NV)

I got an early start at 6am since I wanted to get up to higher elevation before the heat of the day came. I started off with a very steep 4wd road for half a mile, which is a great way to wake up.

Looking back to the South at what I just came up:

And looking ahead, north, to Diamond Peak:

The old road disappeared and for the rest of the day I was hiking XC, usually on horse trails but sometimes just walking straight through the sagebrush. And for most of the day the trail was either going steeply uphill or down, almost never flat.

I loved walking the rocky ridgelines, this one was heading to the summit of Diamond Peak.

After a couple hours I made it to the summit of Diamond Peak!

I signed the trail register and spent awhile looking through it, the entries went all the way back to 2004 which was pretty cool. The view ahead, departing the summit:

The ridgeline departing the summit was the most enjoyable all day, it was pretty flat and relatively rock-free making for easy hiking.

Sometimes the ridgeline would become quite rocky and I would be slowed to a crawl pace.

As the morning progressed it started to get quite warm, and I was glad I was up here at 9,000 ft elevation.

Lunch time was my usual affair of cheese and summer sausage on a tortilla.

After lunch I dropped down a bit in elevation, and the ridgeline started to become a little bit rockier.

I’m not sure, but I think this is a horse skeleton since I had seen a herd of horses earlier today.

When there were horse trails, they were pretty nice, and I was very thankful to have them.

At one point, the guidebook instructs hikers to “save energy” and avoid a 700ft climb, and instead travel around one of the ridgelines, side-hilling for 6 miles. Umm, no thanks. I tried that for a mile and it’s exhausting when there is no trail. To anyone reading who is planning on hiking this, just hike up onto the top of the ridgeline, like I eventually did anyway. And when I was on top of the ridgeline, I found lots of nice horse trails, and also a massive square cairn that somebody had built. It was very strange.

I noticed as I hiked further north in the diamond mountains, the bugs increased. I was surprised at how many mosquitoes would swarm me every time I crossed over to the east side of the ridgeline, where there was no wind. I was even more surprised to see these disgusting bugs make a return, I hadn’t seen them since the Toiyabe mountains.

It was an exhausting day of hiking, and after moving for almost 14 hours, I had only covered 21 miles. It was time to look for a campsite and I was too depleted to continue, so I found an awkward little spot between some boulders, which helped block the wind. I made my dinner while watching the sunset, counting down the minutes until I could fall asleep.

This was probably in top 5 hardest days of hiking, and after finishing my dinner I could barely keep my eyes open and passed out.