The Temple

The Temple (8,292 ft)

May 16, 2021, 5am – 7:15pm

16 miles, 8,000ft gain

Eric, Fred, Andrew

I was packrafting the Yakima River Saturday and looking for a top 200 peak sort of nearby to climb Sunday. The Temple is a top 200 peak in the enchantments that sounded like a fun option. It involves a little bit of rock climbing on the summit and a steep snow climb in a scenic area. It’s not yet high season for the enchantments, so I didn’t expect it to be too crowded.

The shortest approach is from the snow lakes trailhead, so Andrew, Fred and I met up there Saturday evening. Sunday morning we left the cars at 5am. We decided to bring snowshoes instead of skis since it looked like snow didn’t start til around 4,000ft, meaning greater than half of the trip was not on snow. By my rule of thumb this means I don’t bring skis. For the climbing we brought two 30m ropes so we could easily distribute group gear. The climb was short enough that this seemed to make sense. We carried our mountaineering boots and planned to hike in trail runners until we hit snow.

We made good time up the trail, eventually crossing some intermittent snow slopes around 3,800ft before reaching continuous snow around 4,100ft just before the snow creek bridge. We ditched trail runners there and changed into boots. The snow was still firm enough that it made sense to continue without snowshoes. We followed the trail up to Nada Lake, past a few campers, to just past Nada Creek. After we crossed the creek we turned right and headed up off the trail. The snow soon melted away and we continued scrambling up talus slopes.

We scrambled left of the big waterfall, then before reaching a mossy gully we traversed right on a good third class ledge system towards the waterfall. After we hiked up into the trees and back into the snow. We followed the left side of the creek up into a broad basin north of Black Pyramid. At 6,400ft we diverged from the creek and headed up towards the lower northeast ridge of The Temple. The highlight of this route was wriggling through a tunnel underneath a massive chockstone to get past a cliffband.

Above the chockstone we put on snowshoes briefly, but then ditched them when the terrain steepened above treeline. From there we cramponed directly up to the north face of the temple. The true summit of the Temple is a bit confusing and has baffled a few parties from earlier trip reports. It doesn’t help that it’s mislabled on the USGS quad and caltopo. The surveyed point 8292 on the USGS quad is actually the northwestern sub summit of The Temple. The point southeast of point 8292 is the true summit, perhaps 30ft taller. This begs the question – is 8292 the elevation of the summit or of the surveyed point? And if it’s of the surveyed point, then the true summit is probably close to being a Bulger peak (lowest elevation Bulger peak is St Helens, 8,333ft).

Thanks to trip reports from Eric E., Tom S, and Dustin W we were able to sort this out to climb the correct peak. I led the way cramponing up the steepening snow gully between The Temple and point 8292. After a final short scramble I reached the notch, which had a big chockstone in the middle with a rap anchor underneath. There were enough secure places for each of us to hang out up there and take our boots off.

I switched into rock shoes, racked up, and tied into the ropes while Fred belayed. The climb out of the notch was easy, and I found  an old rap anchor just above (probably from parties rapping with a 50m rope). Then I reached the crux slab. There’s a very small old rusty bolt at the bottom of the slab, then some delicate moves on small exposed features, finally reaching some positive holds and a ledge. The bolt isn’t too confidence inspiring and there is no gear on the slab, so I highly recommend rock shoes for this part.

On the ledge I found two pins and got a cam in and built an anchor since I was out of rope. I think a 60m rope would have reached the summit but I was just leading on two 30m ropes. I belayed Fred up first, then Andrew. I think the slab must have been a lot more difficult for Andrew since he was climbing in trail runners.

The next pitch was short, with class 3/4 scrambling up the ledge, then one fifth class move to get up the final bit to the summit block. I belayed off some cracks in big boulder and we all made it up around 12:30pm. We hung out for a while admiring the views. It was sunny and quite warm. The enchantments were still covered in snow, with the lakes frozen over. The permit season officially had just begun for overnight trips, but with all the snow I think it will be weeks before it actually becomes crowded.

Unfortunately I forgot to look around for the register. We found a rap anchor, backed it up with a cam, and Fred rapped down first. The ropes just barely reached our gear. Andrew and I then followed and the ropes pulled no problem. We took a break at the notch and I added a sling and rap ring to the notch anchor. The snow gully was steep enough at the top and we were already geared up that we thought we might as well rap it.

We soon rapped off, then downclimbed and plunge stepped down the gully. I really wish I’d had my skis for that gully, but I knew it would have probably slowed me down hauling them all the way in there for just a short bit of skiing. We followed our tracks back down, not really needing the snowshoes. After wriggling back down through the chock stone tunnel we hiked back to the waterfall and scrambled down the ledge and talus to the trail.

It was an easy hike out. We met one more group camping at the lake, then one group coming back from climbing the outer space route, and one guy trail running. This officially became the most crowded hike/climb I’ve been on since mid october, having encountered seven people over the course of the day.

By around 7:15pm we made it back to the car, and we soon driving home.

 

 

 

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