Trip Report

Langley's Northeast Couloir

Skiing the Steeps on California's Southernmost Fourteener

Mount Langley - North Face

Sierra splitboarder Dave Silver ascends the Tuttle Creek Drainage, with the sheer north face of 14,027-foot Mount Langley rising in the distance.

Loomings

  1. Loomings
  2. Tuttle Creek, Revisited
  3. Skinning Up
  4. Base Camp
  5. Dawn
  6. Climbing the Couloir
  7. To the Summit
  8. Needle Variation
  9. Skiing the Main Couloir
  10. Exit

MOUNT LANGLEY, CALIFORNIA — Late-afternoon sun breaks through swirling clouds, lighting the sheer rock of Langley's north face.

Just left of the summit, a giant, curving couloir drops past granite spires and buttresses to the Tuttle Creek Drainage, 3500 vertical feet below.

Tomorrow, I and my climbing partner Dave will ascend that spectacular ribbon of snow, following it all the way to Langley's 14,027' apex.

And then, if all goes well, we will ski it...

Mount Langley, Mount LeConte, and Lone Pine Peak

Mount Langley (left) from Lone Pine

Mount Langley's Northeast Couloir

the northeast couloir

Like many people, I saw Mount Langley for the first time while visiting nearby Mount Whitney (Langley was first ascended in 1871 by Clarence King, who believed he was climbing Whitney).

After turning back on an especially unsuccessful attempt to ski Whitney, I found myself with unexpected time to kill, so I decided to scout the surrounding mountains for other descent possibilities.

As seen from Lone Pine, Mount Langley is a remote, aloof peak, usually just a hooded outline visible on the horizon through the haze of the Owens Valley.

Two features, however, make Langley of interest to the ski mountaineer.

First is the broad high-altitude terrain along the peak's flanks, which hold gleaming snowfields well into summer. Both the Tuttle and Diaz Creek drainages offer excellent ski touring possibilities.

Second is Langley's North Face, and the striking couloir that drops just east of the peak's 14,000' summit plateau. The Couloir is massive in every respect, easily ranking among the Sierra's biggest skiable lines—from the summit of a fourteener, no less.

Such tempting ingrediants would seem to make Langley a perfect mountain for backcountry skiers. Of course, in the Southern Sierra, nothing is ever as easy as it looks. Both Dave and I have been turned back before trying to breach the Tuttle Creek Drainage—Terrible Tuttle, as we call it now.

Together, we hope to succeed where we have individually failed.

next: Tuttle Creek, Revisited »

SierraDescents.com Features