Mt. langley

14,026 feet

Trip Pictures

Party: Me, Kevin Lewis

Here is how I added Kevan to the proud list of people I have subjected to enormously bad route selection (Ian: cross country mountainbiking, Dan: Mt. Shasta).

On June 12th Kevan Lewis and I left Monterey and headed out to Lone Pine to climb some mountains. We planned to leave from Horseshoe Meadows, summit Mt. Langley (14,027 feet) then spend a few more days trekking across the back country and out at the Mt. Whitney Portal.  First, we shuttled my truck to the Whitney Portal.  We couldn't get a permit in advance, so we spent the night next to the parking lot in Horseshoe Meadows (around 10,000 feet) to acclimate then drove back down the next morning.
After getting a permit the morning of June 13th we left the Cottonwood Lakes trailhead at about 0920, much later than our originally planned daylight. By 1130 we were in the Cottonwood Lakes area where our progress really ground to a halt when soft snow and flooded trails forced us to climb through and over a jumble of car-sized boulders. After some adventure in the boulders (lost my voice recorder and had to climb down under several layers of boulders to hook it with a trekking pole, etc) we made it out the other side and started across another soft snow-field to the snow chute we intended to climb. The snow was so soft we regularly sank in up to our waists, and we were glad when the sun finally went behind the crest and the snow started to harden up again. There was a large cornice (overhanging snow) on the crest, but after stopping for crampons and ice-axes we were able to skirt to the right of it and gain the top without too much trouble. Unfortunately, we had lost a lot of time and it was nearing 5 pm and the winds were gusting around 30 mph when we reached the approach to the final climb to the summit of Mt. Langley, so we found a little shelter behind some boulders and bedded down for the night at 13,100 feet.
At 0230 in the morning we got up and dressed as warmly as we could and set off for the summit, thankfully without our gear. After an hour of scrambling up boulders and patches of snow in the moonlight we reached the summit at 0400, where we froze in the sub-freezing wind chill for the next hour and a half before the sun came up. The sunrise was beautiful, but we were quite cold, so we took a few pictures, signed the summit register and hiked back down to our gear, where we set up the stove, melted snow for water and enjoyed the warmth of the sun for a while.
At this point we decided that instead of going off the back side of the mountain and putting it between ourselves and civilization we would head back down the way we came in. The weight of the food we were carrying was too much for me and my day-pack and our lack of multiple-day duration training combined with the effects of altitude had us both pretty tired.
We set off and decided to take another route down (Old Army Pass) to avoid the snow and boulders we had had to cross the day before. When we reached the top of Old Army Pass we realized it was far too steep to glissade (slide) down, so we threw our packs over the edge and watched them slide down the chute and put our crampons back on to down-climb in the snow. I had brought a rappelling rope and gear for just this situation, but for some reason it never crossed my mind that we could just rappel down the cliff. The down-climb was probably the most physically exhausting part of the trip. It involved kicking a cramponed boot 3 or 4 times into the snow to set it, then stepping down with the other foot, kicking it in, moving the ice-axe down and setting it, then stepping down with the first foot. It was very slow going and the snow was like a reflection oven. I wouldn't have thought you could be so hot on the snow. The worst part of the chute was over 70 degrees and although the snow felt secure it was still scary to be fully committed out on the chute with nothing but rocks and a lake far down below. We were exhausted when we finally reached the bottom and I had to pick up the equipment that had been flung off my pack on its wild ride down.
After a still-difficult hike through the wet meadow we reached the trail down and were disappointed to notice that a whole lot of it was uphill between us and the car. We finally made it back to the trailhead at around 4 pm after 14 hours on our feet (about 22 hours moving time total between the two days I suppose) and drove to the Mt. Whitney Portal store for a cheeseburger.

This trip was different from my previous two in that we didn't see another human the whole time we were out.  On Mt. Whitney there were people up and down the trail (although nothing like it would have been in summer), and on Mt. Shasta there were people on the summit.  On this trip we had the whole wilderness to ourselves.

We did get up at 0200 in the morning at the Whitney portal and think about going for Whitney via the Mountaineers' Route.  It was pretty easy to talk ourselves out of it though, especially because we were worried about route finding in the dark.  Man, in retrospect I wish we would have dumped some food and pushed on with our long-trip plans...

Best places for Langley information on the web:

Summit Post: General Information