Dan Harris's account

Day 10

I was up at 5 am ready to meet the crew. I camped at the trailhead at Horseshoe Meadow. My friend, Joel and I talked over breakfast about whether we could make Langley and get down in time to get home at a reasonable hour in order to get a decent nights sleep for work on Tuesday. We both decided to only go as far as the top of Old Army Pass. I saw a car pull in at about 6. I walked over and asked if he was part of the Sierra Challenge. It was Heyning and he filled me in on all that had happened over the previous few days. We set off at 6:25a and made pretty good time reaching the Cottonwood Lakes area in 2 hours. We rested for a few minutes, had a snack and pulled out the maps to make sure which way to go. Joel decided that he would rather spend some time swimming in Lake #4. Heyning and I headed up Old Army Pass. About 1/3 of the way up, Heyning decided to pick up the pace in case the clouds forming took a negative turn. He said he was probably only going to tag Langley. I wished him luck and off he went. I hope he had a good climb. I reached the top of the pass in just under an hour after leaving Joel. By then, Heyning was well up the slope above the pass headed north toward the peak. I took a few pictures, waved to Heyning even though he wasn't looking and headed back to get Joel and head home.

I am bummed about our time constraint, but that happens and something I should have thought about earlier. I hope Bob puts this on next years challenge. I'll be there.

Heyning Cheng's Account

I just returned from the Challenge. I hiked with Matthew and David on Sunday. We decided that McAdie would wait, given that there were no rock climbers in our group more experienced than Matthew and myself, and that the routefinding seemed somewhat hairy from the descriptions I had read. We decided to climb Mt Muir instead, as it was a 14er that none of us had climbed before. The 3rd class section near the summit was interesting but straightforward. We left the trailhead at 6:05 AM and summitted at 11:15 AM. I returned to the trailhead at 4:50 PM, while Matthew and David continued to the summit of Whitney. Matthew and David decided to skip Mt Langley the next day.

On Monday I met Dan Harris and his friend Joel at the Horseshoe Meadows trailhead at 6:20 AM. Dan decided to turn around at Old Army Pass, so I continued solo to the summit, reaching the top at 11:35 AM. I ended up doing some class 2-3 scrambling on the east face of Langley, but in all honesty it was a welcome respite from the tedious slog up the south slope. The view from the summit of Langley was impressive, though. I decided to skip Cirque Peak and returned to the trailhead at 4:40 PM.