This trip report is about a proud moment in fatherhood: I got to watch my son become a fourteener!
It should have happened a month ago, but that’s another story. Suffice it to say, my wife (who always accompanies me when backpacking) at first decided that she didn’t want to go hiking, so I invited my son for a three day hike. We set our sights high on Langley’s summit. My wife, meanwhile, got jealous. Suddenly she wanted to join the hike in a “support” role. But she hikes really slow and doesn’t like high elevation. She was stubborn and insistent, and eventually I gave up. I told my son not to bother taking that Friday off, and instead my wife and I lowered our sights to hiking to the Cottonwood Lakes. And we had a great time, as we always do. But my son still wasn’t a fourteener.
So we made new plans for Labor Day Weekend. My wife was not invited. We arrived at the Lone Pine Ranger Station before 8am on Friday morning, drew a low number in the lottery, and opted for a slightly more challenging route to Langley, a roundabout route via Cottonwood Pass, rather than the typical, shorter Cottonwood Lakes route. We would take the PCT north from Cottonwood Pass to Soldier Lake, camp overnight, then take our big packs up the New Army Pass Trail. We would stash the big packs at Old Army Pass, dayhike to Langley’s summit, return for our packs, and then descend to the Cottonwood Lakes Basin and find a campsite there. We would exit on Sunday.
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