Mt. Temple — Friday, Oct. 25, 2002

This peak is located in the Enchantments and is the highpoint for Temple Ridge which includes other climbs such as Prusik and The High Priest. It is approached via the Snow Lake trail which starts several miles up Icicle Creek road out of Leavenworth. Expect a long day as the elevation gain is 7,300' over about 17 miles roundtrip. Hike the Snow Lake trail to Nada Lake. On the west side of the lake, about 400' past a double-log bridge is a toilet sign on the right. Follow the path to the toilet but continue on the bootscarred path to the west upslope. It basically follows the drainage for the small stream shown on the map but one will have to follow cairns across a steep slab area to make it to the forested areas above. This would be a difficult trip to make with snowcover as one is often looking at the ground like a tracker to find evidence of the route. Once up higher in the forest follow the trail to the saddle at about 7,200 feet. Then to the south will be Mt. Temple, but it will be difficult to know exactly which one of the crags is the highpoint. Beneath one of the crags is light shining through what appears to be a cannonball hole in the shape of an ""L"". This is immediately beneath the true summit. The route to this location will be to easy enough to determine. Once at the notch beneath the summit we used a single rope with a small rack on easy rock to gain the summit. The day was perfect and the coolness of the air (26 degrees on the shady side of the summit block)reminded us that we were well into fall. There was not a flake of snow to be found along the way though. The creeks up high had frozen solid to the sand beneath and heavy rocks thrown only bounced off the bulletproof ice. All of us reflected when we read the name of Georgia Bakke written in the summit register from 9-22-01. It must have been one of her last peaks before her tragic death in an avalanche late last January. The sun was low in the sky on the downclimb and our moving shadows cast on the surrounding granite walls made poignant the feeling of transiency implanted above. The hike took exactly 13 hours to complete, the final 1+ hr being with headlamps.