50 Best Hikes in the World Every Adventurer Should Do in Their Lifetime

The southernmost trailhead in the Wind River Range, Big Sandy starts in a meadow, quickly enters a forest of evergreens, gives way to stark hillsides of rust-colored boulders and scree, and deposits you at the Cirque of the Towers, a remarkable semicircle of sheer 12,000-foot granite spires, with the glacial basin of Lonesome Lake in the center of it all. The Cirque—each slab has an imposing name like War Bonnet, Warrior, Pylon, Block Tower, Wolfs Head and Lizard Head—is widely considered the best granite climbing in the U.S. It’s a popular base-camp for anyone heading further into the mountains. For optimum solitude, try for early June.

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