Cottonwood Pass - Langley - Cottonwood Lakes Trail Loop
Armored with lots of advice from this forum, especially Akichow, Glenn and Ken for their routing tips made my back country trip an awesome trip that will never forget!.
If you want to cut to the chase, check out the URL below for pictures.
Foremost, i was so lucky to score CP cross country permit, just 2 days before the hike date. Think checking for permits early in the AM, few days prior to hike, has more chance of scoring permit. At least it worked for me twice already.
Day 1 -- Cottonwood Lakes TH - CP Trail - CP - Lower Solider Lake
Knowing 40% chance of rain/t-storms for July 4th, made an early start at 7am from CL TH. Tom Harrison Mt. Whitney High Country Trail Map inset has the route to CP trail from CL Trail. Weather was perfect until 2pm and then started to get iffy. Hail storms with bigger size ice pellets, never seen before followed by torrents of rain and t-storms. Glad i was in the PCT overlooking Big Whitney Meadow which had numerous places for shelter among tall trees and rock slabs. I tried to capture all this fun which can be seen from the URL below. I got little concerned with the weather as it was switching back and forth with hail and rain non-stop. That's when i saw the most amazing group from Sierra Club of 10 members passing me, trying to get to LSL with similar itinerary as mine. I was graciously accepted to be 11 man in their group after seeing me alone in this iffy weather. With no signs of weather clearing, we all decided to walk the trail to keep our body warm with hail storms striking on us. That was fun! I had used my fly creek rain fly as my rain coat and it worked great
We got to LSL around 6pm and the view of it was so rewarding and it made me to forget all the long day hike and weather cleared as well.
Day 2 - LSL - Miter Basin - Sky Blue Lake - Mt. Pickering Saddle - LSL
As per the advice, we took north west drainage from LSL and x-country into rock creek valley. We stayed on the ridge for a while until we hit the tarn with a gradual descent. Miter,SBL and the little tarns surrounding north west to SBL were highlights of this trip as you can see from the pictures. Beachhead was definitely worth the trip and my pictures didn't do much justice to the place.
We took north west drainage of SBL to get to base of Mt. Pickering where it was 1000+ FT of class 2 scrambling to the saddle. Having never done class 2 scrambling before, it was quite challenging in the first but then got use to it and made it to the saddle. I decided to rest at the saddle for my next day langley hike, and rest of the group went to bag the peak which was 450FT higher from saddle. On the way out, we passed overlooking Primrose Lake and sandy scree/rocks chute decent to Erin Lake. Getting down on the scree/rocks chute was real fun! We hit the saddle of rock creek and x-country back to LSL. It was a long day for everyone.
Day 3 - LSL - NAP - Langley - NAP - Long Lake
With long day ahead and being solo again, i broke camp at 6am and headed NAP. Clouds started to form but then it cleared by 8am. Dropped my pack and headed to Langley. Armed with Class 2 scramble training from previous day, i decided to go for boulder and it paid off. I should admit that i had no signs of headache and felt great at the top of Langley.
**Thanks Ken for this route suggestion**
I joined the wonderful group again at Long Lake.
Day 4 - Long Lake - CL TH
I was little saddened as it was all coming to an end, but with all great moments from the trails, makes me want to do these x-country trips more and more.
Thanks again to this forum for providing such an excellent advice.
Here is the URL for the pictures posted.
https://plus.google.com/photos/110878557...=CIPzi_zWn4bNRQEnjoy!
Stalin
