Normally we'd hands down have the smallest and lightest packs for either an overnight or day climb out of any other party on the trail. Because our gear is insanely close to weightless it would allow us to load our packs up with lots and lots of good food. (and some alcohol :)) Getting into the cirque isn't necessarily the shortest approach ever known. It's not that hard, just long with heavy packs. It begins with a relatively flat 6 miles where only about 700ft of vert is gained. After that, you have another 5 or 6 miles to go up and over Jackass Pass and then across the valley until the heart of the cirque is reached. Although it would be a very long and time consumiong approach we headed to the grocery store with big eyes and empty stomachs to get some delicious and decadent grub to bring in on our 5 day adventure. We were going in in style as our cart ( ....yes we are cart people now) was full of Hershey's bars, kit-kats, Granola, seasame sticks, dried bananas, summer sausage, parmesan cheese, and of course peanut butter and nutella. To top off our excitement we bought grilled cheese makings along with wine and Disarono. On nearly every other overnight adventure the one and only thing we crave is grilled cheeses. There is something about having a long streneous day and being able to end it by indulging in a hot, gooey, and crispy grilled cheese sandwich. We literally will spend hours while hiking discussing the lengths we'd go to for one of those bad boys. Now that we'd be filling our desire it was time to head off on the 'ol dusty hiking trail once again.
My lord our packs were heavy! Yes we did it to ourselves but in the end it'd be totally worth it. Sam played the part of a big oxen mule and we musta loaded him up with nearly 50lbs. (the pack weight will eventually give him blood blisters on his hips!) I certainly did not have that much but took as much as I could handle for 11 miles. The first 6 miles went surprisingly fast!! Before we knew it we were heading up the daunting Jackass Pass. Even with our big packs on this was one of the easier passes that we have pushed over. SCORE! The clouds were looking ominous and the smell of rain was in the air. We needed a break anyways so took cover under a big overhung boulder to wait out the storm. The rain wasn't much of anything so in no time we were back at hiking. It was absolutely breathtaking rounding the last corner of the trail and seeing the Cirque of the Towers unfold infront of us. I couldn't believe that this was going to be our paradise for 5 whole days!!
We found a spot high in the basin and got our home away form home set up. The next day were were greeted with awfully ugly coulds and werent stoked on getting poured on so it ended up being a lzy day in the tent. (I literlaly lost my mind and nearly went insane laying around for so long) Luckily there were descent sized breaks in the rain which allowed us to sneak out to make grilled cheese and gorge on mike-n-ikes! we knew the weather wasn't supposed to be much better the next day but we couldn't take another day like the previous. We woke up real early and headed up towards Pingora. In about a half hour we had finished the approach and were ready to start climbing. The route was only 3 pitches with one 4th class section at the top so we figured if we moved quickly we could out run the rain. The route was a classic must do up a very well known peak. We quickly scurried up the face and took some pics of the surrounding peaks in the cirque. We also scored a booty nut somewhere on the first pitch of the climb! Just as we made it back to camp the skies opened up and again started pouring.
I found myself becoming completely stir crazed once again. It's rather hard to lay sedentary for hours on end while the storm works it's course outside. It was a great reprieve once morning came and we were able to get out and start another climb. Todays objective would be the west ridge of the Wolf's Head. This is one of the busiest routes in the cirque so ideally we wanted to get on it before hoards of other people were there as well. On the approach we could see 2 other parties pitching out the 4th class scramble to the base. This was a clear indication that they'd be much slower than us so we needed to devise a way to scoot around them. Off to the side was a gully that we thought we could give a shot. By choosing this option it meant that we would have to climb another small peak, The Tiger Tower, to access the base of the Wolfs Head. Based on the speed of the other 2 parties we figured that we could accomplish this which would allow us to by-pass them and be the first people en-route of the day. As we were oging up the gully, Sam found a #2 cam that looked relatively new!! This was a fantastic find as those cost around $80!! We finished the gully and summitted the Tiger Tower fairly quickly but then realized that we had to rapell off the peak which drastically slowed our progress. We quite literally ended up being behind both parites by about 35 seconds! SERIOUSLY!? Normally it wouldn't be a huge deal to climb behind slower parites but with the weather being tempermental we didn't want to get stuck up high in an alpine storm. As the first party started up we thought they might actually cruise faster than we thought. Nope-slow. We could already tell that the second party was going to be slower than molasses so we needed to devise a plan to get around the 4 people in front of us. We decided to simul-climb which would let us cruise on past them. All was going well until we hit a large traversing pitch were we got bottled up with everyone again. It was mostly our fault as we more or less had caused the snafu in the line of people. We gracefully had put our tails between our legs and took our place behind the other groups. It actually ended up being a rather fun day and some interesting conversations with teh other guys and gals. The top parts of the route were really neat because you ended up doing alot of traversing along the face, squeezing through body size chimneys and the coolest part was when we pushed through holes that took us through the mountain to the other side. Towards the top we managed to bypass everyone and made a quick summit and an even quicker descent and once again just barely made it back to the tent before the storm gods took over the sky.
This time the storm was unrelentless and wouldn't give us a break. It continued to rain until about 8AM the next day. There was a general "I'm sick of the rain" feeling amongst everyone in the cirque that morning as nearly everyone, including us, was ready to pack up and get out of there. There was undoubtably more climbing to be had but we were ready to bounce. After a long 11 mile hike out we treated ourselves to a hotel and a beer at the brewery in Pinedale. The next night was awesome because we were able to use our new camp oven. Started out by making double chocolate fudge brownies followed by some hot biscuits in the morning!
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