Drive on hwy 395 to Lone Pine. Turn west on Whitney Portal Rd. After five minutes, turn left on Horseshoe Meadow Rd and drive up the mountain almost to the end of the road (30 minutes) and turn right when you see the sign for Cottonwood Lakes (not the Pass). This is the Horseshoe Meadow campground for hikers ($6 in 2005). If the campground is full, remember that down the road it was "national forest", so you can camp just about anywhere you can park the car.

(Click on the map)

From the Horseshoe Meadow parking lot (about 3,000m of altitude) follow the trail to the Cottonwood lakes that starts at the northwest end of the parking lot. It is about 10kms to the Cottonwood lakes. There is a first creek crossing after about 15', then another one after another 30'. After 20' a plateau is reached with the New Army Pass fork (don't go to New Army Pass or you'll miss the Cottonwood Lakes). Another 30' of walking takes you to the Muir Lake fork (again, don't go to Muir Lake) and, immediately afterwards, to the first Cottonwood Lake. The second lake is announced by a little house. One can already see Mt Langley (the tallest object in front of you to the northeast). To the left, one can guess the location of Old Army Pass, although it cannot be seen yet. The trail continues to the left of the second lake and to the right of the third (very long) lake. Now Mt Langley is no longer visible because the basin of the fifth lake blocks the view. At the end of the third lake, the trail goes down to the left and finally Old Army Pass becomes visible. The trail continues in between the fourth (left) and fifth (right) lakes, and then begins climbing up the pass. After about 45', the pass is reached. The trail is wide and well-maintained all the way to Old Army Pass, despite having been erased from some maps. It offers, in fact, one of the best views of all the Sierra passes on both sides.

(One can also use New Army Pass if there is still snow on Old Army Pass, but New Army Pass makes it much longer).

Now that you are on Old Army Pass, walk to the Sequoia Park sign (very visible) and eight meters later take the trail on the right. This is usually marked with cairns and, again, very visible (but, of course, it depends on how much snow came down the previous winter). If instead you continued straight, you'd head for the Pacific Crest trail down the valley. (You can see the use trail coming down from New Army Pass on your left).

The trail to Mt Langley (usually in very good conditions, despite not being shown in any of the major maps) coasts the north side of the Cottonwood Basin up a ridge. You can finally see Langley when you are on top of this ridge. From this point the trail leads to the base of Mt Langley. Once the trail disappears (at the base of the rocky part), there are different ways to get to the summit, depending on how much you like scree and how much you like rock climbing. The very rightmost part is for professional rock climbers only. More towards the left, it is easy class-2 climbing. Many people go up to the right of a monolith that you can see well when you are at the base of the mountain. An even easier way is to go further to the left, where a wide strip of dirt circles around most of the rocks. Whichever way you go, you eventually reach the summit plateau. It takes a bit of intuition to find the summit (register and marker are invisible until you step on them and there is no obvious peak).

Here are the three routes that I suggest and the one that I do not recommend at all:

Look for my Langley hike's pictures

Distance from parking lot at Horseshoe Meadow via Old Army Pass to summit: 16.8 kms. So round trip it is about 33kms. The elevation gain is about 1,300 meters.

Trail milestones (and 2005 times):

• Horseshoe Meadow trailhead (3060m)
• First creek crossing: 30'
• Second creek crossing: 1h
• New Army Pass fork: 1h15'
• Muir Lake fork: 1h35'
• Lake 1: 1h50'
• Lake 2: 2h
• End of Lake 3: 2h30'
• Bottom of Army Pass: 3h
• Old Army Pass (3700m): 4h
• Top of ridge: 4h 15'
• Base of Langley: 5h
• Summit plateau: 5h45'
• Summit (4280m): 6h15'
• Pass: 8h
• Lake 1: 11h
• Parking lot: 12h

• Pictures
• Directions to the trailhead and map of Cottonwood Lakes
  Mt Whitney and Langley weather