Cirque of the Towers
landform
The Cirque of the Towers is located in the Wind River Range Wyoming, U.S., part of which is in the Bridger Wilderness in Bridger-Teton National Forest, while the remainder is in the Popo Agie Wilderness in Shoshone National Forest. Located in the southern section of the Wind River Range (or "Winds" for short), the cirque is a very popular destination for technical rock climbers. Climber Orrin Bonney gave the area its current name in 1941 after his survey of the cirque. Prior to this, few if any visitors had ventured into the cirque due to the remote location. The cirque is an almost circular hole or valley carved by a glacier that retreated over 8,000 years ago. As is true with the rest of the Winds, the mountains are composed almost entirely of granite. The Continental Divide spans the crest of the main peaks.
The towers average 1,000 feet (300 m) lower in altitude than the highest mountains in the northern Winds, with Lizard Head Peak (12,847 ft (3,916 m)) being the tallest. Other individual mountains in the cirque include Shark's Nose, Warbonnet, Warrior Peak, Wolfs Head and Pingora Peak. There are hundreds of routes to choose from in difficulties ranging from 5.1 to 5.11a and since the mountains are composed primarily of granite rock, there is good anchoring.
“Cirque of the Towers” enters the record as landform. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Cirque, Towers and landform can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 24, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q1093103. Authority coordinates are 42.783, -109.232. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1941.
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This entry incorporates text from “Cirque of the Towers” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.