Wyoming
The granite wonderland of the Winds is one of the largest roadless regions in the lower forty-eight states.
With its smooth, silvery gray texture and tendency to erode into soaring walls and dramatic pinnacles, granite is one of the most beautiful rocks on Earth. The most famous granite is found in Yosemite National Park in California, but the remote and rugged Wind River Range in Wyoming gives Yosemite a run for its money. An extra enticement is that in contrast to the always-busy Yosemite, the Winds are far off the crowded tourist track.
The Wind River Range is located south and east of the Tetons—from the air, look for a silvery gray expanse of granite sprinkled with many blue lakes—but its geologic story is different from that of the Tetons. Over a billion years ago, an enormous volcanic intrusion formed deep underground, cooling slowly with time to form a granitic batholith. This batholith remained buried for millions of years, until the Laramide orogeny exposed the mass of granite at the surface starting around 70 million years ago.
The Wind River Range is famous for its multitude of lakes that sit in glacially carved granite basins.
The planet’s multiple ice ages had a profound impact on the Winds, which were covered in ice sheets over 2000 feet thick during much of the Pleistocene Epoch—a time from around 500,000 years ago until about 8000 years ago. The numerous lakes and cirques (amphitheater-shaped valleys) that characterize the Wind River Range today were carved by these highly erosive rivers of ice. The most famous of these is the Cirque of the Towers: a lush, lake-filled bowl surrounded by towering granite peaks.
At the foot of the Cirque of the Towers lies Lonesome Lake, the remaining vestiges of a once-powerful glacier that created the picturesque valley. Approximately 170 glaciers (both named and unnamed) remain in the Wind River Range today, including Gannett Glacier, which sits on the north slope of the highest mountain in Wyoming, 13,809-foot Gannett Peak. Gannett Glacier is currently the largest glacier in the U.S. Rockies, but like many glaciers it is shrinking. In 1950, Gannett Glacier covered nearly two square miles of Gannett Peak’s slopes; by 1999, coverage had shrunk to just under a mile and a half, also thinning by more than sixty feet.
The Winds are a beautiful sight on the way to Jackson or Casper, Wyoming. The range is located east of the Tetons.
