Cirque of the Towers
Wyoming - USA

July 15 - 24, 2005
 

Day 2.  Sunday, July 17, 2005
We got up at 8:30, had breakfast and broke down camp.  The mosquitoes were BAD.  The sky was clear and blue with no sign of the storm the night before.  It hadn't rained so our gear was dry.  The morning started off cool but soon warmed up.  We wore long pants and long sleeves to keep the mosquitoes from biting.  However, they still bit us right through our shirts.

4 minutes after leaving our camp we came upon Big Sandy Lake.  If we had kept going for just 4 more minutes the night before we would have been able to camp along the lake, which would have been so much nicer.

We walked along the lake then embarked on the upward grind towards North Lake.  Another grind from the lake to the next ridge and then on to Arrowhead Lake.  We had lunch at the southern end of Arrowhead Lake, looking out to the tip of Pingora just above the ridge.

Arrowhead Lake with Wolf's Head and Pingora in the background.

We watched two other groups ascend the boulder field to the west of Arrowhead Lake (the climber's shortcut).  Each group took a very long time to get through the boulder field.  Once we got there we realized why.  With there being snow along the edge of the lake we were not able to follow what looked like the usual trail along the edge of the water.  Instead we were forced to climb up the huge boulders the size of cars, going up and then heading down a bit and finally coming out at a gravelly, steep trail up to the ridge above the lake.  It took us 36 minutes from the south end of Arrowhead Lake to the ridge above the lake.  In all it had taken us 4 1/2 hours of hiking to get over the pass to the Cirque valley.

Jane with the bears, Festus, Ruffus, Grumpy and Treasure.

The sight of the Cirque of the Towers when we reached the top was fabulous.  The peaks in this range really are most beautiful.  After taking some photos we headed down into the valley.  We got to our campsite on the other side of the river at 3:25pm.  The site was almost flat with several small, stocky trees for shelter from the wind.  It was very windy when we started setting up camp, 60 degrees F with a beautiful blue sky.   What spoiled the whole effect was the mosquitoes.  We had to keep walking while eating our dinner to prevent them from biting us and getting in our food.  We could not just sit down somewhere and enjoy the view of the majestic peaks enveloping us.

After dinner we went to visit a few of the other groups camping up there.  At 7:30pm we could see climbers on the summit of Pingora.  They had apparently climbed the East Face, which must have taken them longer than they anticipated because being on the summit at 7:30pm is not a good idea.  After chatting a bit and swapping route information we got in the tent at 8pm just to get away from the bugs.  At 10pm we heard the climbers coming past our tent.  Coming down Pingora in the dark must have been an experience.

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