The Cirque of the Towers is without a doubt the most beautiful place I have ever been. It is a rock climbing and backpacking heaven although the trail in from Big Sandy Lake can be brutal, hence the name Jackass Pass. It is well worth the effort though once you arrive at the Cirque.

Knowing that my summer of fun was coming to an end I decided my last trip of the summer would be a solo trip to climb Mitchell Peak and pay respect to the lengendary mountain man Finis Mitchell. For those of you unfamiliar with Finis Mitchell, during the 1930s many of the lakes in the Wind River Mountains did not have any fish in them. Using horses and 5 gallon milk cans Finis stock 314 lakes with over 2 million trout. He also was the first to scale many peaks in the Wind Rivers. He climbed almost all 300 peaks in the Wind Rivers lacking only 20 summits. For his dedicated service to Wyoming and the Wind Rivers the Forest Service honored Finis by naming Mitchell Peak after him. He was the only man to ever have a mountain named after him while he was still alive. I went on several hikes with Finis as a young boy and my aunt Sherry was really close to him. I thought it would be a fitting last trip to scale his peak and pay respect to a great mountain man.

September 1, 2001

The hike from the Big Sandy trailhead up to Big Sandy Lake is about 6 miles. The trail remains relatively flat and skirts through the forest and several large meadows along the way. Arriving at Big Sandy Lake you finally get some nice views of the nearby Peaks. Scheister Peak is in the photo below and located on the south side of the lake.

From Big Sandy Lake the trail splits and to continue on to the Cirque of the Towers you take the Jackass Pass trail up over the hill. The photo below is taken from the first hill on Jackass Pass with Haystack Mountain on the left and Temple Peak on the right.

This photo is looking north from Jackass Pass where you finally get a good view of the south side of Mitchell Peak. Mitchell Peak marks the southern end of the Cirque of Towers and its north face is a 2000 foot vertical face. Hence: unless you want to do a lot of rock climbing, you climb Mitchell from the south side. The red shows my route up Mitchell Peak. I arrived at North Lake which is approx. 2 miles from Big Sandy Lake and decided this would be a nice campsite. I camped right under the Sundance Pinnacle which is a 1000 foot rock spike.

September 2, 2001

Hitting the trail from North Lake about 9 am I followed a small canyon and chute up to the saddle between Mitchell Peak and Dogtooth Mountain. The photo below was taken from the saddle looking back and Temple Peak(center) and Big Sandy Lake(right). If you look closely under Temple Peak you can see Temple Lake and above and left of Big Sandy Lake you can see Clear Lake. This saddle also makes up the Continental Divide. For those of you who don't know what that means, all precipitation that falls on the east side of the divide goes to the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico, everything on the west side goes to the Pacific Ocean.

I arrived on the summit of Mitchell Peak around 11 am with amazing views in all directions. The photo below was taken looking 2000 feet down on Lonesome Lake. Many of the peaks the make up the Cirque of the Towers can be seen in the photo below.

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The photo below is looking west from the summit of Mitchell Peak. The two peaks in the picture make up Warbonnet Peak and Warrior I is on the left and Warrior II is on the right. The peak was named Warbonnet because if you look at the peak from the front they look like Indians with headdresses on. The photos do not capture the size of these peaks, Warrior I on the left is about a 1500 foot rock face.

The photo below shows some of the more famous peaks in the Cirque of the Towers. Both Pingora and the east ridge of Wolf's Head are two of the 50 Classic Climbs in the North America. For obvious reasons the Cirque is a mecca for rock climbers from all over the world. This is truly one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen in my life and recommend if you get a chance to visit it for yourself someday.

I spent over an hour on top of the peak reading through the summit register which contained a letter from the Wyoming State Senate honoring Finis Mitchell for his long and distinguished service to Wyoming and the Wind River Mountains. I arrived back at my tent around 2 pm and felt good enough to pack my gear back out to the car. It was a very fitting last trip of the summer.