Mt. Langley Via Tuttle Creek

QuestforBCM · Post by **QuestforBCM** » Thu May 26, 2011 6:24 pm

On May 22 Myself and 3 strangers set off to climb Mt. Langley (14,042 ft) via the more technical Tuttle Creek route to the North East Couloir. We started on the trail at 12 P.M on Sunday. The route was straight forward up until the covered well where we lost the trail and ended up Scrambling up scree for 2 and half hours so we back tracked a bit and found the main trail to snow fields around 9,000 ft. Then we hiked until about 7 P.M. and ended up camping around 9,500 ft. The next morning we woke up around 7 AM after our 4:30 AM alarm didn't go off. But we were able to pack our summit packs and get our crampons on in 20min and we headed up to the summit. After about 2 hours of hiking through snow fields we made it to the NE Couloir. The Couloir is some really tough and steep class 2-3 climbing especially towards the top. But half way up one of the guys had several symptoms of altitude sickness and decided to wait for us back at camp. He was okay later in the afternoon but was not able to summit. It took about 3 hours to get to the top of the couloir and from there we encountered some super steep terrain that was near class 4. But even though we were not expecting it we made it to the summit after a quick traverse to the summit. At the summit we took pictures, had lunch, and took the best naps ever. Now is where the fun starts. We realized we had to down climb near class 4 terrain in order to reach the couloir. We just had to take it one step at a time. Even though it was mostly solid ice under the little bit of hard snow. It was like doing some low angel ice climbing to get down but it was super fun and we made it back to the couloir. From that point we glissaded down several thousand feet in perfect glissading conditions. Then hiked back to base camp. We packed up and hiked back to the truck and made it to Lone Pine around 8:30 PM. Overall It was an amazing trip and the strangers I hiked in with became some really good friends. All the Photos are on my Flikr page (link below) Also be sure to check out my blog to follow all my climbing adventures. Also It was my first 14'er

http://www.flickr.com/photos/questforbi ... ntaineers/

http://questforbigcitymountaineers.blogspot.com/

lilbitmo · Post by **lilbitmo** » Thu May 26, 2011 8:08 pm

Great Report Big City Quest, that's on my list, one of these days I'll do the Tuttle Creek route

GigaMike · Post by **GigaMike** » Fri May 27, 2011 10:37 am

Congrats on a fun climb.

Your right about the slope after you exit the couloir, it's the steepest part of the climb.

TracieB · Post by **TracieB** » Fri May 27, 2011 4:35 pm

Nicely done, Quest. Love the views from Langley 8) thank you for sharing your photos and TR.

QuestforBCM · Post by **QuestforBCM** » Tue May 31, 2011 5:18 pm

Thanks Guys. I should have a report for Split Mountain in 2 weeks so keep your eyes open

QuestforBCM · Post by **QuestforBCM** » Sun Jun 05, 2011 4:59 pm

here is the video of the climb if anyone wants to check it out.