Mount Temple and Devil's Thumb

Alan Kane refers to Mount Temple as "the ultimate scramble".


Angie had been planning this attempt for a long time, ever since her failed bid several years ago. Mount Chester the weekend before was our warmup, and in the end I think it was the more difficult, albeit shorter, scramble.
 
Friday, August 26th, 2011

We left Calgary after work and arrived at the Lake Louise campground around 8pm. Things were full to the brim, but fortunately there were no loud groups and we enjoyed dinner and a campfire until it was time to go to bed for a 0530h wakeup.

When we first learned of Joanne's colourful history with respect to marshmallows

Saturday, August 27th, 2011 - Mount Temple

Temperatures overnight probably reached single digits and I woke up once to get into my sleeping bag. The morning was crisp but I knew things would heat up significantly during the day, so I enjoyed what I could of the cool weather.

After a quick stop at Laggan's, we arrived at the Moraine Lake parking lot to find that there were already a LOT of cars there. A tour bus even arrived as we were getting set to start, so our idea of an early start was laughed at by the tourists. How humiliating.

Our first view of Mount Temple (on the right) as we walked through Larch Valley (Eiffel Peak is on the left)

We saw three groups ahead of us as we made our way to Sentinel Pass. Topping out in about 2 hours, we saw a couple of groups heading towards the Grand Sentinel for a day of climbing and several more groups headed up Temple.

Starting up from Sentinel Pass

The trail up Temple is fairly obvious. However, the only complication is that there are many of them, and it's not always clear whether each one follows a path of least resistance. I generally gravitated towards solid rock while others prefered scree.

There are at least 2 cliff bands that need to be negotiated, and maybe even 3 depending on which way you go. They're all fairly easy but I could see how they could get to be bottlenecks. We waited a bit for the group in front of us to finish the first rockband in order to avoid rockfall. However, on our way down, we were the last group so we didn't have the same problem.

Topping out of the chimney

Peek-a-boo!

We reached Angie's previous highpoint, took a little break to prepare for what was surely a false summit, and began trudging up the last bit of scree.

The last flat area before the summit

A false false summit

The amount of snow on the summit was quite impressive, given how warm it was whenever the wind stopped blowing. Having an ice axe was nice as an unintentional glissade would be quite painful and time-consuming.

Summit!

We stayed on the summit for over an hour, seeing groups come and go. I think we saw a total of 30 people summit that day, so there was no lack of people to follow, up or down.

The view from the top (or close enough anyways ... the actual summit was too crowded so we came back down)

On the way back down, we decided to try an alternate descent (isn't that how Search And Rescue reports always start?) and did some scree surfing in lieu of joint-crushing steps along switchbacks.

Looking down on Moraine Lake

Once we had rejoined the Sentinel Pass trail, there was an innumerable number of people both in front of and behind us, so we decided to pretend to be friendly for a bit and chatted with some of them.

Larch Valley and the Ten Peaks (from left to right, Babel Fay Little Bowlen Tonsa Perren Allen Tuzo Deltaform Neptuak)

Once we got back down to Moraine Lake, we took a quick dip in the water to enjoy the cool glacial water before heading back to camp. Mount Temple was in the bag!

Sunday, August 28th, 2011 - Devil's Thumb

We decided to have a relaxing day before driving back home, so the destination for this day was Devil's Thumb (Lake Louise version, not to be confused with the many other thumbs that the Devil seems to have, all over the world).

Our first view of Devil's Thumb, rising above Lake Agnes

The tourists were out in numbers, but we managed to weave around them and make it to Lake Agnes before it got too chaotic.

A relaxing moment away from the crowds at the teahouse

From the lake, we headed up the switchbacks to the Big Beehive, then took an unmarked trail that skirted along the side of Devil's Thumb before going up on the backside. Along the way, we found many ripe wild strawberries that were quite sweet.

Delicious wild strawberries. Angie fought off a bear for the right to pick these.

The top of Devil's Thumb was very wide and flat, making for a great place to relax and watch as 3 groups scrambled up Mount Niblock. That route looks quite steep and loose, but it's always difficult to gauge from so far away.

Cairn on the summit of Devil's Thumb, looking down on Lake Louise

In places, the summit was clear of vegetation and loose rocks, revealing a network of crevasse-like gaps among large blocks.

The crevasses were large enough to engulf a large duffle bag

We only encountered two (or was it three) groups along the trail. I guess it is possible to find some solitude at Lake Louise, even on a beautiful day during high season.

Delicious!