August 4th: Day 0

Pictures at the bottom :)

Kim and I set our departure date from West Virginia for August 1st with the aim of blasting across the midwest as fast as possible!
For months, a crew from WV had been cooking a climbing trip to the Cirque of the Towers in the Wind River Range of Wyoming. We were dying to go, but our priority was the move, so we were hoping to get our ducks in a row in Colorado with enough time to join on the trip!

Luck was on our side when my friend, Rob, from Boulder was kind enough to let us stash some of our things at his place, so we were able to postpone finding a place to live until after the trip! We dropped our things off with him and immediately went North to Wyoming.

When we pulled up to the trailhead, we were pretty nervous about crowds because we literally drove past what seemed like hundreds of cars to get to the trailhead campground! Luckily we were there in the late morning, so we were the first to arrive at the actual camp ground and had our pick of spots.
We made it to there early enough to have several hours to organize all our gear for an 8 day backcountry climbing trip; a bit of a tall order, but we pulled it off! Our packs were insanely heavy, but the approach was only about 10 miles and a couple thousand feet of elevation gain, so we figured we'd tough it out.

The homies, consisting of Me & Kim, Matt & Anna, Arthur & Ashley, and Lonesome Chris (referencing Lonesome Lake below Pingora and Chris being our 7th wheel) showed up in the late afternoon and we all got ready to head out together early in the AM! They had a bit of a tougher time of it than me and Kim because we had the benfit of our fully packed and ready to go bags in our vanhome, whereas they all had to cook breakfast and pack away their tents before being ready to hit the trail.
We all went to bed itching to get started in the morning!

August 5th: Day 1

We were all on slightly different schedules for our mornings, so the majority of us (everyone except Matt and Anna) hit the trail and started walking after breakfast, around 08:30 or so. The approach was pretty friendly to us, all told! The first six or so miles were on relatively flat ground and we were relatively fresh, so they went by in a flash.

After lunching at Big Sandy Lake, we started the last few miles, which also included the majority of the elevation gain. We weren't in a huge rush though, and some of us swam in North Lake.
As we got closer and closer to the Cirque of the Towers, we started seeing peaks in the distance ahead that we recognized! Pingora was the first that we saw as it slowly rose ahead.

I was also keeping a sharp eye out for an easy boulder problem called Smegma that was said to be right off the trail. It was at the perfect location for a little break, right at the top of the pass into the Cirque where all the uphill was over and we were looking down on the valley we were to call home for over a week!
Most of us took a crack at it (it was unexpectedly spooky!), then we shouldered our packs again and made our way to camp.

It was harder than expected to find a campsite! Every time we thought we'd found a good spot, tents revealed themselves in the brush as soon as we got close. Eventually, though, we found an area somewhat dispersed, but where all four of our tents had flat enough ground for a comfortable pitch.

By this time, Kim had hit a wall. We suspect it was altitude sickness, as our camp was at a little over 10,000ft above sea level! While we all whipped up some dinner and rested up, Kim lay in the tent with some water.

The chat around camp that night was that we were all a little wiped from the hike in but also absolutely awestruck at the beauty of the cirque¹. We decided to not set alarms in the morning and probably take a rest day on the morrow.

August 6th: Day 2

We all got up on our own time and leisurely whipped up some breakfast... and decided to go climbing. The mountains towering all around us were calling out and we had to answer!

We decided we'd all try and climb the South Buttress of Pingora, a shorter objective that would make for a good intro to the cirque! Arthur, Ashley, and Chris were ready first and headed out, followed by Matt and Anna, then not long after me and Kim!

The approach was classicly alpine, involving some rock hopping, scrambling, and interesting route-finding.
The altitude was getting to Kim again, so we decided to take it slow and switch to climbing the East Ledges route instead, since it goes at a more reasonable 5.2 grade instead of 5.8!

Both routes started at the same place, so we all got to rack up and start our climbs together; an awesome way to start the trip! South Buttress goes straight up, whereas East Ledges climbs on a pretty solid diagonal, so our paths diverged immediately, and Kim and I had the route to ourselves the whole day!
We had a chill time heading up to the top with easy routefinding and fun movement in a beautiful setting.
I missed the path of least resistance on the last 30 or so feet and took a 5.6 clean corner crack, which Kim handled great!

We topped out at the same time as Matt and Anna, then headed up to the summit together. Ashley, Arthur, and Chris were a little longer coming up as they were behind Matt & Anna climbing as a group of 3, so we hung out at the summit snacking on chocolate and chatting while we waited.
Eventually, though, the whole crew was together at the summit of Pingora!

After taking the customary photos and hanging out for a minute all together, we made our way down. There's around 350ft of rappelling to do in order to get down to the start of the walk-off. Since we had so many people in our party, we decided to do some fancy tricks to get six of us down in two rappells and have Arthur bring up the rear and do four rappells to get all our gear down.

Back at camp, we were all pretty stoked to have gotten a climb in, but were definitely feeling the fatigue from the hike in and summitting a technical, nearly 12,000ft peak!
We went to bed fully planning on a rest day in the morning...

August 7th: Day 3

For most of us, this was indeed a rest day. Matt and Anna, however, got an alpine start² and shot off to climb the East Ridge of the Wolf's Head, a long, committing³, convoluted 5.6 ridge traverse! The rest of us were perfectly happy to sit around and take a nice, well deserved rest day.
Some of us went and fished while others slept in or chilled around camp reading books and vibing out. I made huge progress on An Immense World, a book about perception. I so inundated myself with wild information about the world that I had to switch to a novel (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?) so I'd have time to process all the wild animal facts I had learned.

After the day had heated up sufficiently, we all headed off to Towers Lake to take a swim! Most all of us skinny dipped out to a rock not far from shore, basked in the sun, and watched tiny little shrimp like creatures darting about in the water. Eventually we got bored of that and/or hungry, so we headed on back to camp and continued our own rest day activities.

Chris and I planned to do the East Ridge of the Wolf's Head the following day, but my stomach had NOT been treating me super well today. Due to being in a sensitive, well visited environment, we were all packing out our waste, and I'd taken four poops today, all into a bag. It did not instill confidence in me for attempting such a committing climb early the next morning, but I was biding my time and hoping to feel better.
Ashley and Arthur were also planning on doing the East Ridge, so we'd all make a little train!

Well after we'd finished dinner, Matt and Anna traipsed back into camp, looking pretty worked. They had a blast on the East Ridge and regaled us with tales from the climb, making it seem like it was quite a fun, but arduous ordeal.
The multiple tales of bravery on spooky traverses struck the fear of god into Ashley, being no fan of traverses, so she decided to bail.

About half an hour after going to bed, my stomach was still feeling crampy, which simply did not fill me with stoke for the climb. I hopped out of the tent for my fifth and final poop of the day, and went to Arthur and Ashley's tent to see if Arthur wanted to go with Chris instead. He said we could all wake up at 3:45 and see how we were feeling, so we went to sleep...

August 8th: Day 4

Well, the dawn hadn't quite dawned yet and I was awake with Chris and Arthur, who were both rarin' to go, so I went back to bed.

I got up after the dawn had dawned, had a nice breakfast with Kim and Ashley, and we hatched a plan to climb a chill 5.2 route up the Overhanging Tower! After hurriedly packing gear and snacks, we headed out for the longest approach of our whole trip.
We hiked all the way past Pingora, Cirque Lake, and the Wolf's Head to get into the saddle between the Wolf's Head and the Overhanging Tower. On our way up we passed a couple getting water from the stream below Cirque Lake who had gotten benighted on the Wolf's Head the day before and were only just now getting back to camp! They said they were looking forward to a nap.

We quested our way up easy ground, following our noses with Kim tied into the middle of the rope. Several times all three of us would be climbing at the same time!
I led a long pitch up to a huge ledge below a steeper wall and belayed Kim and Ashley up to me. Ashley decided she liked the look of the next section, so she took off on the lead! Kim had to do a smidgen of climbing to give Ashley room to get to a good anchor spot, and while Kim was heading up this guy from St. Louis climbed up to me and I got some sick photos for him.

After leading that pitch, Ashley was fine handing the reins to me for the rest of the climb, and I couldn't resist taking some slightly more challenging sections that Kim and Ashley crushed! We were not far from the summit when the wind seriously picked up, forcing us to shout to each other to communicate even while we were all at the same belay anchor, so we decided summitting might be a little risky and decided to head down from a rappell anchor we were using as a belay.

After winding our way down the maze of blocks, we headed down to Cirque Lake for a nice dip. We had to wait a while for some nearby climbers to dissipate before hopping in, but boy was it worth the wait!

After taking a refreshing swim, we headed down to camp for some dinner and R&R. Once again, after everyone had pretty much finished dinner, Arthur and Chris made it back to camp looking pretty haggard. Similarly to Matt and Anna, they'd had a great time but were certainly challenged!

I was definitely feeling some things, wishing I had gone up, since my stomach had been treating me better that day, but I was happy my friends had had a great time, and hindsight is always 20/20! I couldn't be sure how I was going to be feeling, so being a little conservative was the right move, albeit a bummer one.

August 9th: Day 5

Another rest day today, but this time for the whole crew! We started with a real slow morning together, then kinda went our separate ways strewn across the cirque. Lots of napping, reading of books, exploring the cirque, and just hanging around commenced! All in all a very productive, if not eventful rest day.

Arthur and I hatched a plan to climb the Northeast Face of Pingora the next day! It's one of the two top 50 climbs in North America housed by the Cirque of the Towers, so I was super stoked on it. Also, so far in the trip I had only worn my approach shoes to climb, so I was really excited to do some more challenging climbing that would require my rock shoes!

We set our alarms for an alpine start :)

August 10th: Day 6

We got our alpine start, had breakfast, and got walkin' all well before dawn. With very few wrong turns, we made excellent time and made it to the base right around first light with not another soul in sight! We'd read that this climb can get pretty crowded, so it was awesome to have it to ourselves.

We decided to take turns leading, so I took the first pitch. For the most part it was just 5.easy, but towards the end there were a couple of exciting 5.8 friction slab moves where you have to trust purely in the friction of the rock against your sticky rubber climbing shoes. I scampered across and made a belay at a tree, then belayed Arthur up to me.

But he got served a big ol' slice of humble pie at the friction slab moves, which are his kryptonite. Add that to the fact that if he were to fall he'd get caught by a ledge ~6 feet below before the rope would catch him and you've got a bad combo.
He ended up climbing up above the friction slab, placing a cam that he'd cleaned from earlier on the pitch, then did the slab with a top rope from the cam. Once he got back, he put me on belay and I scampered on back to get the cam and return. My experiences climbing at Stone Mountain in North Carolina really served me well!

With the whole team and all our gear at the top of pitch 1, Arthur headed off on pitch 2!
... where he got served another biiiiig ol' slice of humble pie :'(
He made it to the top, but decided to pull the plug and bail since we had bail anchors there and might not later on in the route. We left a carabiner and a quick link behind to bail back to the top of pitch 1, then reclimbed pitch 1 in reverse (and did a cool pendulum setup to get Arthur past the other friction slab option, which was neat!), then started hiking down.

At some point on the hike down Arthur and I parted ways so he could go fester, since he was pretty bummed about getting served.
I ended up at Lonesome Lake next to the water for a few minutes enjoying the insane beauty of the place before heading back to camp.

Once back at camp, I basically just chilled out some more! Chris and I also hatched a plan to climb the Left Side Cracks on Pingora, one grade easier than the Northeast Face but equally as long. It would be my last chance to do some more serious climbing for the trip, so I was really excited for it!!
Matt and Anna had climbed Left Side Cracks while Arthur and I attempted the Northeast Face, so Matt gave us some tips and showed me the approach trail so we'd be able to cruise straight to the climb in the morning.

August 11th: Day 7

Another alpine start... except this time I realized I'd forgotten to filter water the day before and didn't have any prepared! Kim and I had been borrowing filters from the homies, as had Chris, and we were the only two awake....
I ended up using this backup filter Kim and I had brought that was basically a lifestraw and had no way to filter into another bottle. So I repeatedly filled that bottle with water, sip a mouthful, then spit out the mouthful of filtered water into my water bottle for the day!
I made it clear to Chris that he probably wouldn't want to borrow water from me so make sure to bring enough!

The approach was super easy, even easier than for the Northeast Face! The start was right among a beautiful patch of purple flowers, and we once again arrived just as first light was coming around.

Chris and I took turns leading the entire day, cruising up enjoyable cracks of various sizes, anywhere between fingers all the way to offwidth⁴!
Chris got one spooky slab pitch. While it took him a while, he freaking crushed it! Dealing with having his belayer pretty far away, spooky moves way up there, and later on in the pitch heinous rope drag, he still put it all together.

The crux pitches came after that, so I took the first one, which was so much fun. It started with some offwidth, which I don't do much of, but I managed to struggle through anyway and continue through some glorious crack climbing, which took me to the base of the money pitch, a sweet corner with a perfect hand crack on either side of the corner!
When Chris got up there, he offered that lead to me too, and I took it with absolutely zero hesitation!

It was just as fun as it looked, but I did make a little mistake by placing the big #4 cam early to get it off my harness. Near the top of the pitch, I got to a section that could only be protected by that cam!! I had to lock in and do the moves to get a little higher where I could place smaller gear, wishing I'd kept the #4.
All's well that ends well, though!

From there, Chris led the last, wandery pitch to the summit, and we headed on down.
We got lucky on the descent and there was a group right behind us, so we just tied one end of our rope to the rappel anchor and did two full 200ft rappells where the group above us dropped our rope down for us!

Back at camp, we all had a nice dinner and prepared to hike out in the morning. Everybody had places to be and/or flights to catch, so we were motivated to get an early start (not an alpine start, though!).

August 12th: Day 8

Shocking nobody, the professional backpackers (Arthur and Ashley) were packed and ready to hike first, shortly followed by Chris. We all knew the way out, so they went ahead and got started. As Kim and I were putting the finishing touches on our packing, Matt and Anna cruised past, motivating us to get out of there!
Kim was using a new-to-her pack which turned out to not fit very well, so I took most of the climbing gear on the way out. I think my pack weighed more on the way out than it did on the way in!
We were joined for a little bit by a solo backpacker which made for excellent conversation, but eventually he stopped for a break while we forged ahead. The last few miles dragged on and on, the heavy packs were definitely taking their toll on us.
My shoulder was really paining me, especially after having climbed over 1,000ft the day before. But we finally made it to the finishing stretch, where we passed a family that we gave the standard hiking greetings to. A 12 or 13 year old among them saw how haggard we were and gave us some much needed stoke, exclaiming about how close we were!
Love that kid.
Only a couple minutes later, we were dropping our packs next to the van and joining our compatriots next to their rental jeep.
We had finally done it!!

They were destined to fly out of Casper, where the hoped to spend the night, so Kim and I decided to make for our friend's place in Boulder, CO and get started building our life in Denver!

Thanks for reading this far, hopefully there will be many more adventures on the horizon. Graduate school will definitely be taking up the majority of my time, but I'll be getting out climbing when I can (you can see how that's going on my climbing dashboard), and I've got a big adventure planned for after graduation.

Stay tuned!

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