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| Wolf's Head (left) and Pingora (right) - view from our campsite |
Day 1
On Saturday September 6, 2025 I flew to Rock Springs, Wyoming where Dave H. and Dave L. picked me up, having made the drive up from Colorado that morning. We spent one night in the town before making the two hour drive to the Big Sandy parking area. This was my second trip to Wyoming's Wind River Range this summer, and I was just as excited, if even a bit anxious, this time around. The hike into the Cirque of the Towers was about 9.4 miles, including a few detours, and took us about 6.5 hours with our 60 lb packs and making a few stops along the way. We chose a camping spot in the meadows south of Pingora, pitched our tents, and were just settling in when a storm rolled in dropping heavy rain and lowering the temperature significantly. This was not the beginning we had hoped for! And we all began to think about what it would be like to be trapped in a similar storm atop one of the peaks towering around us.
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| View of our campsite in the meadows below Pingora |
Luckily the skies cleared relatively quickly and we could prepare for the following week's adventures. Looking back at the end of the trip, the weather turned out about as well as we could have expected it to, with a small bit of rain almost every day, but mostly in the afternoons/evenings and never enough in the mornings to interrupt our climbing. This was very lucky indeed.
Day 2
We awoke around 5 AM, ate breakfast and were on the trail by 6:50. We had decided to climb Pingora's Northeast Face, one of North America's "Fifty Classic Climbs". For this first day out I climbed with Mike, and the two Daves partnered up. However, all the climbs we did this week were done together in two groups of two, so we were never far apart.
Dave H. and Mike were psyched to use fix-and-follow techniques. This would be my first time using these methods and I was definitely a bit anxious about it. What if I needed to be lowered a bit? What would it feel like not to have constant rope-based feedback between leader and follower? How would the margin of safety change with the follower constantly untied from the rope, relying solely on progress-capture device to keep him attached? By the end of the day I was more comfortable with the technique and had some nebulous answers to all of these questions, but I will admit that the far more standard technique with the leader belaying the follower from above is still my preferred technique, especially if there is any chance that the route might wander or become overhanging. Yes, fix-and-follow does give a lot of rest to the leader, but there are significant downsides to this advantage.
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| Mike chalks up while leading up the Northeast Face |
P1 - my lead, with some tricky route finding through an unprotected bulge/traverse over to the corner at the base of P2. The climbing was not especially difficult, but (at least the way we went) a foot slip in the wrong place would have meant a nasty pendulum fall both for leader and for follower (in opposite directions). In fact, another two parties directly behind us bailed off the route even before completing this pitch.
P2-P4 - also my lead, and much more straightforward. My memory is a bit hazy, but I think these were mostly clean, beautiful corner crack the whole way.
Mike led all the pitches after this to the top, probably starting somewhere in the middle of P5. The wide 5.8 section in the middle of P7 felt harder than anything that had come before. The 5.8 section in P9 also was more challenging.
Once we reached 3rd class territory we scrambled unroped to the true summit. Dave H. and Dave L. by mistake kept climbing into some 5.10c hand crack up to a false summit. Here they were forced to rappel back down to the ledges to join us on our scramble. From the top we scrambled down to the K-cracks rappels. Combining our two ropes, we were able to descend in just raps.
Overall I feel that this climb lived up to its hype and served as a wonderful introduction to climbing in the Cirque.
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| Celebrating atop Pingora |
Day 3
Today we again left camp at 6:50 AM with the East Ridge of Wolf's Head as our objective. The approach may have been the most exciting part of the day. We approached via a series of grassy ledges, very steep in places, at least 4th class and maybe even low 5th. I did not feel secure here and honestly would have preferred to have a rope. Despite gray skies and humid air threatening to unleash storms all around us, we continued upward, trusting (perhaps unwisely) the rain-free forecast we had obtained earlier in the morning via our InReach devices.
At the col between Wolf's Head and Tiger Tower I started us off by leading a good two rope lengths, simul-climbing with Dave H. on the other end. This section consisted of a long ridge traverse with plenty of protection and very easy climbing. Dave caught up to me, and we continued to simul climb from there on similar terrain. Reaching the first tower pitch, I again took the lead. Here there was a memorable chimney where I removed my backpack and moved from the south to the north side of the ridge. It was easy climbing but a tight squeeze. Chimneys like that make me claustrophic!
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| Simul climbing up the first pitches of Wolf's Head East Ridge |
Dave took the following "piton" pitch, moving across the slab and up to the right. He also linked this pitch into the next one, finishing across a knife edge traverse where I ended up straddling the ridge and shimmying along it, then down climbing about 10 feet to a stance below an overhang.
I took the next pitch, moving left around an arete/boulder and back onto the south face. Here I traversed along a beautiful hand crack with delicate feet below for quite a ways until I reached a chimney. Climbing this shallow chimney I encountered a few loose blocks. At its top I literally dove through a hole back onto the north side. I was forced to remove my back pack to fit through this hole and still became semi stuck a few times by the gear on my harness catching on the floor and walls.
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| Dave H. squeezes his way through the hole after the chimney on the East Ridge |
From here we simul climbed to the top with Dave leading the way through one final hard move right below the summit.
To descend we made a series of bolted rappels between ledges, then a long walking traverse southwest to gain a low point on the west ridge. Here we crossed back over the ridge from the north to south side and made a final rappel into the gully between Wolf's Head and Overhanging Tower which led us to 3rd class terrain and back to our camp.
The climbing this day was much easier than the previous day, but it still felt like a proper adventure.
Day 4
Today we "rested", doing no physical activity other than to hike around and think about what we might want to climb on the following day. It turned out we still covered 1,500 vertical feet of elevation! We were trying to decide between Black Elk, Brown Cow, and Mitchell Peak's North Face Center. We walked south along the western side of the Cirque to the top of Jackass Pass but couldn't get a good view of Warbonnet's southeast face from there. Instead we hiked east over to the base of Mitchell Peak and then even farther south where we finally gained the vantage we needed. By now the wind had really picked up and we started imagining what it might be like to be climbing on either Black Elk or Brown Cow with 30 mph wind gusts tugging at our clothing and slings. So we hiked all the way around Mitchell Peak to its Northeast Face where we ate lunch and inspected the line up the center of this wall. Here was more sheltered from the southwesterly winds we had experienced earlier, and we decided it would make the best objective for the following day.
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| Which way should we go? |
Day 5
We left camp earlier today at 6:20 AM, finally getting efficient about our morning routine. Hopping across the boulders and up the talus slopes to the base of North Face Center (Ecclesiastes), we racked up for the final day of climbing. Today I would be partnered with Dave L.
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| Approaching Mitchell Peak |
The climb starts under an overhanging flake in a hand crack.
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| Mike on the first pitch of Mitchell Peak's Northeast Face Center |
P1 - A bit dirty and wider than hands but with lots of handholds.
P2 - A long 5.7 traverse, very wandering and hard to find the right gear and right path.
P3 - ?
P4 - Lieback traverse with solid hands in an undercling, then a corner with many flakes to the next belay.
P5 - Moved right around an overhang into a wide crack for a shot section, then much easier climbing through broken rock in a corner.
P6 - Moved up through an overhanging corner on very easy terrain but still filled with broken and untrustworthy rock. Moved up onto a ramp that trends left to a very comfortable ledge, I completely hit the end of my 60 m rope at this point and tied directly into the anchor with a single locking carabiner.
P7 - Flakey, slabby face climbing with flakes poorly attached to the face and marginal protection. 4th-class climbing to the back of the "bowl".
P8 - A rather wide chimney/gulley with two potential paths, one up the left, the other up the right. Each way has a wide crack to follow the whole way up. The pitch stops on the best belay ledge of the day, maybe 70 ft below a large overhang.
P9 - Continued up the gully on loose, large flakes that look as if they might want to come off in your hands. Worked our way through another easy chimney again with loose flakes and gained the top through choss and large boulders.
The descent from this climb took us over the false summit and then down to the right (north) along grassy ledges/slopes towards Jackass Pass. We even experienced a bit of sleet on the way down, and the stiff gusts of wind that buffeted us confirmed we had made the right decision not to climb over on Warbonnet today.
My overall impression of this climb was not overly positive. Some folks on Mountain Project had compared it to the quality of climbing on Pingora, but I thought it wasn't nearly as good or as fun as what we had done earlier in the week.
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| Descending from Mitchell Peak |
Day 6
Checking the weather forecast in the morning, we decided we would hike out today. We packed up our camp, spotted Dave H. on a boulder problem he had spied the day before, and made our way back past Big Sandy Lake to the parking area.
