Mt Whitney Zone Forums General Discussion Cirque Peak via Cirque Lakes?

During normal seasons (June / July), is Cirque Peak climbable from Cirque Lake? It looks like a stretch to climb Langley, descend to a campsite at Long Lake, and climb back up New Army Pass. Of course you could always summit both mountains in a day, but that is hard to do... Any input on this?

I've only ever summitted Cirque Peak from camping at Cirque Lake so yes it's totally doable if you don't mind 3rd class scrambling.

From Cirque Lake, the route(s) is completely off trail - heading north then east into the bowl immediately north of the peak - then a fun scramble up to the summit. I've marked a rough path here for reference: https://caltopo.com/m/U15N

note that's a really rough approximation of the route I've taken - obviously terrain plays into the exact lines up/down the mountain.

Was the class 3 scramble challenging compared to other class 2/3 peaks? Up to now, I've only summitted two major peaks: Round Top Peak and Freel Peak, the former being a class 2 and the latter a class 1. Both were pretty easy, and I've been looking forward to more. I've also summitted part of the ridge near Lyons Lake (https://www.hikingproject.com/trail/7096130/lyons-lake-to-smith-lake-viewpoint), not sure what this would qualify as but there are a few small (~3 - 5 ft tall) rocks at the final stretch. Looking at the GPS track, the Cirque Peak ascent doesn't look too bad compared to the scramble near Lyons... is this true or not? Thanks for responding quickly.

It's definitely 3rd class depending on how your choose your route - I definitely used my hands/arms for upward movement. I'm not familiar with the two other peaks you mention - so I can't compare them, but I didn't encounter any 3-5' blocks in my routes on cirque - more like 1-3' for the most part..

I found this video on youtube of Cirque - not sure how they approached it, but seems they went up the side I did) - if you skip to around the 5 minute mark you can see video of the scramble up the face - this seems in line with my experiences (I've done the peak 3 times now): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNx6MjJNkXs&ab_channel=RudyFleck

Hope that helps!! lemme know if i can be of other help

=)tif