Wyoming Rocks!

My apologies for the lame pun; I couldn't help myself. Today's post is again coming to you from the Lander public library in Wyoming. We are back from a successful venture into the Cirque of the Towers in the Wind River Range (pictured above) and spending the day taking care of some errands (laundry, groceries, etc.) before heading out later this afternoon for our next destination.

After my last post we drove out to the Big Sandy Trailhead about 70 miles outside of Lander to hike into the Cirque of the Towers. We had planned to hike in that afternoon but decided to wait until the next morning instead. This proved to be a wise decision as the hike in took much longer than anticipated. (And we got to see a moose which wandered through our campsite that evening!) We started the hike early the next morning and made good time through the first 6 miles on relatively flat trail to Big Sandy Lake.



Thomas had most of the heavy stuff in his pack; I had the food. (Ha ha, I'm no dummy.) From Big Sandy Lake things got a little more difficult. We started climbing up switchbacks which definitely slowed me down, and also managed to lose the trail to Jackass Pass, where we would enter the Cirque. After alot of scrambling over talus, we found the way eventually up to Jackass Pass. After going through the Pass, we were rewarded with one of the most amazing views I have ever seen. Hiking through the pass and coming into the Cirque is something that I don't think I will ever forget.



We found a nice spot, dropped the packs (not a moment too soon!) and set up camp.



Our intention was to climb Pingora (the prominent mountain on the left in the photo above) and Wolf's Head (which is just barely visible in the upper left corner behind Pingora).



Did I mention that the bugs are a problem here? Thomas and I had laughed at the idea of purchasing head nets. Now, we've both seen the error of our ways and would absolutely not go back to the Cirque without one. The mosquitos are out of control.

We selected a large boulder several hundred yards from our tent to do our cooking and food storage (because of bears) and dubbed this the "Kitchen boulder."



Thomas hiding from the bugs on the Kitchen boulder. As you can see from this picture, we hiked in with the bare essentials, which included a french press for our morning coffee. Fortunately, Thomas and I are both coffee snobs and so we are in agreement that this item was a necessity.

The next day, we set off for Pingora with the planned objective of climbing the South Buttress route. After quite a bit of scrambling, staring at the rock, and expressed frustration at the minimalist description of the route in our guidebook, we eventually ran into two nice guys from Kentucky who had a bit more information. They were also interested in the same route so we decided to try the Southwest Face (5.9, 4 pitches) instead. Thomas and I traded leads through some fun climbing and eventually reached the summit.

From there we had an excellent view of all the snow accumulated at the base of Wolf's Head which would have made the descent from that mountain somewhat "tricky." We also ran into our friends from KY again who pointed out that there had been an avalanche at the base of Wolf's Head while we were climbing (I thought what I heard was thunder in the distance) and that there were a number of fracture lines in the snow below. As Thomas noted, the two of us don't have a lot of "mountain sense" but we had enough to know that we needed to reconsider our plan to try Wolf's Head the next day.

Instead, we decided to return to Pingora to climb the South Buttress route as originally intended and were rewarded with a great climb.



Thomas and I again shared the leads and the climbing was very high quality.



The summit of Pingora, at 11,884 feet. On our way back down after climbing the South Buttress route, Thomas suggested that we try another line that we had spotted the previous day that looked clean and nice. Without knowing what we were getting into, and hoping to find some gear placements along the way, Thomas set off...



It turned out to be two nice long pitches of 5.8 and 5.9 climbing that put us back on top again. We returned to our campsite after another good day of climbing and prepared to hike out the next morning.

We made the hike out in 4 hours and both agreed that the experience had been worth the significant amount of work it took just to get back there and get to the climbing. We learned a lot about the Winds in particular and about this style of climbing more generally.

Since we find ourselves now a little behind schedule, we've decided to make this a Wyoming trip. The idea of spending the month focused on the climbing in one state (especially one as amazing as Wyoming) is appealing to both of us. Our next stop is Fremont Canyon which is about two hours from Lander and just outside of Casper Wyoming. I saw an article and some pictures of Fremont a couple of years ago that really captured my attention and I have been wanting to get there ever since. Thomas has also never been so we are both interested in checking it out. After a trip to the grocery store to re-stock this afternoon, we'll be headed that way. I'll let you know what we find!