Strike Mission in the Winds!
I left my house in Portland on foot at 4:30 AM on Monday, July 15th, for the bus to the airport, landed in Denver a few hours later, caught another bus to Boulder, where my good friend Zack picked me up. Another six hours later, we were crashed out at our friends’ house in Lander, WY.
Zack and I had made plans to try and complete the Cirque of the Towers Traverse in the Wind River Range earlier in the summer and gave ourselves one arbitrary week in July to make it happen, hoping we would get 2 days of decent weather to make it happen during the week. Lo and behold, we got to Lander, and it was raining, but the forecast looked promising the day after next. Zack and I used Tuesday to do a little sport climbing in Sinks Canyon and finish provisioning for our trip into the Winds.
On Wednesday morning, we drove to Big Sandy trailhead and walked the 8 miles into Cirque of the Towers. Feeling fresh, the miles went quick, and we found ourselves with our camp set up in the early afternoon. We had tromped around looking for places to camp, and surprisingly Zack dragged me over to the same exact spot I pitched my tent last time I was in the Cirque with my buddy Matt, three years prior. On that previous trip, our attempt at the traverse was stymied by a significant hail and thunderstorm that forced Matt and I to hide in the tent (the same one Zack and I are using) for 18 hours and subsequently coated the mountains in verglas.
But it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows this time around, the mosquitos were voracious, and I had counted well over a fifty bites before the sun went down.
We arose from what felt like a long and restless nap at 4:00 AM, pounded some black tea and a bar, and started walking by 4:40 AM. We started via the K-Cracks route on the SE Buttress of Pingora, and Zack began leading out just as we were gaining the sunrise. We climbed the entire route in one simul block and found ourselves on the summit about 30 minutes later. We rapped down to the notch between Wolf’s Head and Pingora, and I took a block across the skyline on the iconic E Ridge of Wolf’s Head. We continued up and down the skyline, rapping to the notches between the major formations for a few more hours, connecting over to Overhanging Tower, Shark’s Nose South and North Summits, Block Tower, and Watchtower. After regaining the ridge of at the top of Watchtower, the terrain loses some of its bite, and it is a bit of cross country mileage and a touch of scrambling to get to South Watchtower, Pylon Peak, Warrior II, Warrior I, Warbonnet, and down to Arrowhead Lake and eventually camp. We pulled back into camp at 8:55 PM, making for a pretty long day out in the hills, but we were happy to eat something other than bars and candy.
The next morning, we walked out, swam in the river, and then drove back to Lander. With a couple days left before having to go our separate ways, we went sport climbing at Wild Iris to spend whatever energy we had left.
