On August 25, Emma Kluge and I climbed a new route on Mt. Langley (14,026’) in the southern Sierra. For a couple of years, I had been eyeballing the ridge to the west of Horizontal Thought Movement, a 5.8 on the north face put up by Ben Cohen and Nate Ricklin in 2009. This summer, the right timing, weather, and partner all aligned.

The independent ridge that we climbed ascends roughly 1,500’ and tops out a few hundred yards west of the summit. After the approach from the Tuttle Creek trailhead and some third-class scrambling to the base of the route, we roped up and climbed a vertical crack on crumbly rock for a couple of pitches to gain the ridge proper. We stuck to the ridge and were rewarded with many pitches of awesome, exposed crack and knob climbing. A couple of hundred feet below the summit plateau, we crossed over a small tower and into a shallow notch, from which we climbed two final pitches. We soon reached the summit, elated and exhausted. We descended the Northeast Couloir back to the Tuttle Creek drainage and our camp.

We named the route Felsic High Road (1,500’, III 5.8). We left no fixed gear.

                  —Damien Nicodemi