Saturday's storm in the langley/old army pass area was pretty intense. Me and my buddy hiked up old army pass with our full backpacks and tried to summit saturday. When we approached the pass, an isolated T-storm was over Big Whitney Meadow. We sat at the pass trying to decide if we should push for the summit of langley. Of course i knew that afternoon T-storms in the sierra went from cottonball clouds to full storms rapidly. Langley had few clouds overhead, and in fact the clouds almost seemed to be dissipating. So we pushed on with a constant eye on the sky. Many people were summiting. We seemed to be second to the last ones up on the ridge with a couple behind us. Around 13,200 ft the clouds above us grew dark. I looked over the Kaweah Ridge area and saw a really nasty set of clouds approaching from the whitney area. It did not look good. Me and my buddy turned around immediately and ran down the ridge. The couple did not seem to turn around. We ran fast and realized it only took us 15-20 minutes to run back to old army pass. At that point we witnessed several strikes of lightning hitting peaks around Big Whitney Meadow again. We looked behind us and langley had been enveloped by the storm. We were hoping the couple had turned around as well. we ran down the pass fast. It began to hail on us pretty hard. As we reached the lake below the hail intensified. The hail had become much larger and now hurt really bad. Now the storm was directly over the pass and above us. Lightning hit the peaks directly above us ... langley's ridge, old army pass, etc... The ground shook below us everytime a strike hit a peak. The sound of crack and thunder now merged into one. The sound was so loud that I covered my ears everytime I saw lightning hit. We put up my tent at record speed, and hunkered inside hoping that the storm would pass quickly. After ten minutes of continual lightning, thunder, and hail directly overhead the storm moved. Now it rained hard, but my worries subsided. It was about 5pm or 6pm at that point. It rained most of the night and finally the rain stopped around midnight. In the tent we had fallen asleep a couple of times so we did not know if the two people had come down safely. We hope they did. Just because we were a bit unerved that they might not have made it down, we awoke at 5:30am the next day with a clear sky overhead, we went up the pass once again. Got to the top of the pass at 6:10am or so. When we got to 12,400ft, we could see langley with piles of hail accumulated on it's south facing side. Clouds were now coming in from the Owen's valley and the sky grew dark once again, but real early! Not knowing what the weather was doing, we didn't want a repeat of the day before, so we turned around once again. Got to camp, and headed out. On our way out we ran into another couple who ran into similar problems the night before. They were camped with their son under new army pass. Their son's friend had gotten lost in the storm, but didn't return to camp that night. We also heard news of another person who had gotten disoriented in the storm and luckily found some fishermen the next day that led him/her back down to the trailhead. Not sure if these two incidents were related. In any case, it was a crazy night and my hope is that all are alright. Some pics below:
Click on each picture to see full size.
