I took a trip to the Cirque of the Towers in the Wind Rivers this past July. My coworker Lukas and I packed up ten days worth of food, camping and climbing gear and humped it in to the Cirque over a day and a half period. We arrived and happily dropped our packs and set up camp in one of the nicest spots right smack in the center of the Cirque. Beautiful! We awoke to splitter weather which would be the trend for most of the trip and took off to climb the East Face Left route up Pingora. This allowed us a nice warm up to the climbing there and also gave us a slight break from the overwhelming swarms of mosquitos that were a fact of life for us for the duration. We went on to climb Pingora twice more via the N.E. Buttress, and then the S.E. Buttress linked with the East Ridge of Wolfs Head- phenomenal. We also had a relatively unpleasant trip most of the way up the N.E. Buttress of Warrior 1, it sucked and we bailed. Lukas led almost the entire way on the Center Route up Mt. Mitchell as I was not feeling the force that day. We met some cool folks up there, 3 couples to be exact. We ended up hanging out with Dave Turner and Emmanuelle most often partly because he had a fishing pole which was of prime importance for pulling dinner out of the lakes and streams. We enjoyed learning some of the finer points of fish hunting, trout watch out! All four of us eventually packed up and left the Cirque to hike about 7 miles away to Deep Lake. This was the right move because it turned out to be even more beautiful than the Cirque-not easy. The rock seemed better over there too but we did not get to enjoy any of it due to the weather crapping out for a couple of days. We decided that beer was better than trees and mosquitos at this point so we packed up again and headed out for good. We gave Dave and "Manu" a ride out to a crossroads where they will continue their hitchhiking journey up to Jackson and we will head back to B-town. A good trip all together. Cheers!
