SummitPost.org

EasternSierra wrote:

ashbal wrote:I have done 20 miles Round trip and reached the summit which is 4000 feet high from sea level in about 12 hrs. It may or may not take 12 hrs for me in Mt Langley but if I start early may be around 4 at the trail head, we might come back around 4 in the evening and then we have a 6 hrs drive back to Sunnyvale,CA. Hence the early start.

I don't know how good of shape you're in (perhaps you're a professional runner or something) but I think your plan sounds pretty ambitious and a good recipe for a headache. You should at least sleep at the Cottonwood Lakes trailhead to acclimatize before you start your day hike.

I did Mt. Langley on July 4, 2010. We backpacked to Cottonwood Lake #2 (~11000ft), slept there, started hiking around 8 or 9, and probably got back down to camp at 4 or 5 in the afternoon pretty tired. You're talking about sleeping at Lone Pine (~4000ft), driving to the trailhead, doing a 20+ mile hike from 10,000ft to 14,000ft, and then driving back to Silcon Valley afterwards. Good luck with that!

Not all that crazy... I once left Davis at 1PM, drove to Whitney Portal, dayhiked Whitney by moonlight, and then drove home by 9PM the following day. so that's roughly 700 miles of driving and 22 miles of hiking in 32 hours. Didn't feel great on the summit, but managed nonetheless. YMMV

ashbal wrote:Hi,

I am planning to hike Mt.Langley around Aug end. I was planning to drive down from Sunnyvale,CA to the Lone Pine area on Friday , stay in some motel and start to the trailhead around 3 in the morning the next day. Will that work better for me or camping in the trail head ? I dont have any camping gears.
If I stay in some motel in Lone Pine, how far is the drive to the cottonwood lake trail head ?

Thanks

You'll need more than a few hours sleep at the trailhead for it to help you acclimate and you'll probably sleep better in the motel. At the same time, you really don't have to get a motel or have camping gear because you can just bring some blankets and curl up in a ball in your car and go to sleep for few hours before you start hiking.

How concerned I should be regarding wild animals if I were to start early (around 4 am) from Cottonwood trail to the summit ?
is there a need for me to get pepper spray ?

ashbal wrote:How concerned I should be regarding wild animals if I were to start early (around 4 am) from Cottonwood trail to the summit ?
is there a need for me to get pepper spray ?

If anything, you might want to get some horse repellent...

In regards to your dayhike, lots of conjecture on what's possible; I'll add my recent experience: I drove up from sea level Friday morning (5 hour drive), started hiking right at noon; took the South Fork Lakes trail, went cross-country at the east buttress of Cirque over to New Army; hit the summit at 4:30; took Old Army down and was back at the car at 8:00pm and at Doug's hostel for a shower at 9:00. (And I highly recommend the Chinese food at the Merry-Go-Round next door.) Beautiful weather up there right now.

Thanks Jeff.
My plan is to camp at horseshoe meadows at night (reach there around 6 pm , sleep and start around 4 am for hiking), go to summit via new army pass and return back in 12 hrs. I guess your route is completely different from mine. Since one of the posters in this thread said I need to put stuff in bear boxes, I was not sure if I need to be cautious and carry a pepper spray cos i will be starting around 4 am.

I've done this hike twice. The first time back in July 2010 we had to turn back because we came up against our turn around time. We left that morning around 8am from Long Lake. There was snow on the pass and had to take an alternate route which took a long time. I had altitude sickness issues and that was after sleeping at Long Lake the night before and at the trailhead the night before that.

The second time was just three weeks ago. I had spent some previous time at high elevation - hiking and backpacking - going into this. We camped at Long Lake and climbed New Army Pass. We left at 5am and got to the summit at around 11:30am.

My advice is to spend as much time getting used to the altitude as you can and also figure how hiking at high altitude is going to slow you down.

Was up there last weekend, love this place..