By Jarek

Cirque of the Towers in the Wind River Mountains of Wyoming has been on my bucket list for years, a sort of fabled holy site I was proud to claim for my state even though I’d never been there. The timing (and distance!) of our tours makes it difficult to be around at the right time to go, and our two little bundles of joy quickly become burdens of pain when lugged for any great distance. The cirque is also far away from everything which, while a very desirable quality, necessitates something of an expedition before even beginning to hike.

As such I’d written it off for the foreseeable future, telling myself only “Someday.” Yet in the midst of a pandemic, everything came together to provide an opportunity to turn corona-lemons into lemonade. Home for the summer? Why yes! And for much longer than anticipated. Free, experienced babysitters? Behold worthy grandparents on hand, willing to be reminded for a few days of how glad they are to be empty-nesters. Supposed to be social distancing? You say “six feet,” I say, “two hundred miles!”

To cap it off, my excellent sister lived not too far off and agreed to accompany us. As a field tech for Wyoming Game and Fish, she can fry fresh-caught trout on a homemade willow grill, instruct you in the different techniques for fighting off black bears vs. brown bears, and rap about black-footed ferrets. In short, she is much cooler than I am and way more qualified for this sort of thing than I’ll ever be. A perfect guide.

As with most natural wonders, neither pictures nor words can really do it justice. But at least when yours truly is holding the pen, photos come a whole lot closer, so this entry will be heavy on imagery and light on prose.

The basics of the hike are simple: from the trailhead, hike six miles to the northeast to Big Sandy Lake. The trail follows the Big Sandy River and passes through beautiful forest and meadows with very little elevation gain. Once you arrive at the lake, begin to appreciate the Wind River Mountains rising around you. Start heading due north—and up. From here to the Cirque it’s only three more miles, but it’s slow going on steep trails up and down sheer mountainsides around three more alpine lakes. Almost every step forward is worth a glance backward; the higher you get, the more expansive and magnificent the view of the peaks to the south.

For those who aren’t familiar with the word “cirque,” it is French for “circus.” They are created by glaciers grinding down one side of a mountain, creating a deep basin with steep sides forming almost a ring. The valley then follows the path of the glacier out of the mountains. For Cirque of the Towers, therefore, we could have come straight up the valley from the east, following the North Popo Agie River up to Lonesome Lake in the Cirque itself. That trail is more gradual, but much longer—26 miles one way, compared to 9 via Big Sandy.

The shorter route sneaks over and into the Cirque through Jackass Pass. I’m not sure if the name derives from the pain it causes or the wish you have for a donkey to haul you through it, but both could be appropriate. I actually thought the pass itself wasn’t that bad compared to all the up and down we’d already done; at one point we were looking down on Jackass Pass, but by the time we started the final ascent we still had several hundred feet of sharp elevation gain to go. That last hill was also a clear, straight dirt path, which I found easier than the sometimes disappearing rock path leading up to it. You clear the pass at 10,800 ft, traversing the Continental Divide as you do. At last you drop steeply down into the Cirque. No matter how tired you are at this point, every step is spectacular.

We saw only two or three other tents in the entire Cirque, and we never saw their owners. E led us to a perfect campsite in a stand of trees to the east of Lonesome Lake. Stepping out from the trees into the marshy meadow stretching along the river, we had a 360-degree panorama of granite towers and blue sky. It was my paradise on earth.

The next morning we couldn’t help rising with the sun to watch the peaks slowly turn from shade to gold. It was a place to sit for days in contemplation, but time marches on and duty calls, so after breakfast we broke camp and trekked back out. I don’t know that I’ve ever been in a more beautiful place, but the two smiling faces waiting for us at home were still the most beautiful sight in the world.

P.S. The nerdy reference in the title… in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Silmarillion, the Vale of Tumladen is a hidden valley “in a ring of mountains tall and sheer,” which is protected from the evil in the world for many centuries. I have an almost uncontrollable impulse to make Lord of the Rings references while hiking…