Temple Crag From South Fork Big Pine Creek

  • Updated: July 15, 2018
  • Post By: Matthew Hengst

July 14th & 15th, 2018
Temple Crag (12,976')
7.2 miles, 4,300'
9.3 miles, 3,100'

Temple Crag is one of those peaks that is very well known and yet relatively seldom climbed.  It straddles the North and South Fork of Big Pine Creek areas and is probably right up there with Whitney and Lone Pine Peak in how commonly people post pictures of it online and for good reason.


This is the view of Temple Crag from 3rd Lake in North Fork from a trip a few years back.  It pops up early on as you're climbing up the drainage and just dominates the sky.

It's yet another peak I'd tried to plan periodically but never made it up.  The closest I'd ever come was maybe 1/2 of the way up Contact Pass after a failed attempt at the North Palisade U Notch turned into Sil and Gayley with time to spare.  That time my battered knees and the horrible slog up the pass caused me to turn back and eventually make plans for this weekend to get it via South Fork of Big Pine Creek along with Randy de los Santos and Gracia Plascencia.

Since it was planned relatively late we didn't have a permit and so would have to brave the Inyo walk in permit system.

For those blissfully unaware in the Sierra for each trailhead there are a set number of permit slots that are issued every day.  Supposedly this is based on the number of campsites up each trail but if that's actually the case I sure a hell can't figure out how they decided on numbers.

Some of the permit slots are available to reserve 6 months in advance online and these are hotly contested for many of the more popular trailheads like Big Pine Creek.  You basically get online a few minutes before 7 am and hit refresh repeatedly on your browser to try and snag your spots before anyone else gets them.

Failing that a certain percentage are held back and given out as walk ins. For these you have to show up in person to claim them at one of the east side permit issuing locations.  They start giving them out at 11 am the day before the entry date so that meant for our Saturday entry we ideally would have been there at 11 am Friday.  Since we all had to work that didn't work and we had to take our chances at 8 am Saturday morning when the Lone Pine permit station opened.


Since we were going to have to wait around for that nonsense we figured we might as well enjoy a decent breakfast first. After driving up late Friday night and sleeping for a few hours at Tuttle Creek Campground we were at the always excellent Alabama Hills Cafe right when it opened at 6 am giving us plenty of time to enjoy a leisurely breakfast and slurp down a few cups of passable coffee.


We were sitting outside the visitor center well before the gates opened and we were the first people waiting at the door when they open at 8 am.  Unfortunately they do a lotto for all permit services these days so we had to take part in a drawing...and pulled the 22nd slot. *sigh*

Fortunately they have some nice comfortable chairs at the far end of the building.

Unfortunately they were slightly infested with spiders. Buy hey, wilderness experience!


Despite our poor drawing we managed to score the last of the 5 walk in permits available for South Fork that day and by 10 am we had driven up the road from Big Pine and started hiking.



The hiker trailhead for both forks of Big Pine is located below the the pack station meaning you have a bit of a walk to even get to the end of the road.  We followed the normal trail and then turned left at the sign for South Fork.


No sooner had we made the turn but (of course) it started raining on us. We had a rather interesting looking forecast for the weekend calling for a 40% chance of rain from 11 am to 11 pm, spontaneous thunderstorms, and a general unsettled weather system with a lot of monsoonal moisture.



This was my first time heading up South Fork though I've hiked up North Fork many times. I was honestly really excited since it's increasingly rare to get to experience a new trailhead like this.


In addition to the awesome views there were a large amount of edible and ripe sierra gooseberry plants along the trail.


A few miles in we came to a stream crossing.  Not only were there no logs or rocks to use to cross but it came up to upper thigh when we waded.  Fortunately it wasn't moving too quickly or else this would have been hairy.


Just past that we crossed into the wilderness proper and started the climb up to Willow Lake at 9,500'.


Willow was beautiful in no small part due to the peaks towering above the drainage.  Palisade Crest, Norman Clyde, and Disappointment are all located further to the south and look quite impressive. They also happen to all be peaks I need to stay tuned...


From here we would be leaving the maintained trail and following what I'd heard was a use trail leading up toward Contact Pass.


And there was a use trail...after a fashion.  We followed ducks and an intermittent trail across several slightly precarious stream crossings and up the drainage.


Right around 10k there was a decent campsite (waypoint DecentCamp) in the trees right where the streams met.  It also happened to be located right next to a rather marshy body of water and there were a rather large amount of mosquitos present so we elected to continue up towards our original plan of Elinor Lake.


And wouldn't you know it that's when it really started raining.  We had just made it across a slightly precarious stream crossing and started up through the combination of brush and rocks when it let loose.


The rain had the advantage of scaring off the mosquitos for a bit but didn't make for quick progress.  We crawled our way up to about 10,400' and then turned south following a drainage up towards Elinore.


If we thought the the mosquitoes were bad before they were epicly bad as we climbed the drainage to Elinore. I had a bug net and rain jacket on and I still had to put bug spray on my hands and even then they would charge through it to bite me requiring constant movement to dissuade them.

(You know it's bad when you wave your hand in front of your face and feel like you're scooping mosquitos through the air...)


We made Elinore a little after 6 pm tired and soaking wet.  We found a decent site in the trees east of the lake and decided to call it home for the night.

In retrospect it would have made more sense to stay lower either at waypoints DecentCamp or OKCampOptions but we had been hopeful we would get above the mosquito hoards and have a slightly more pleasant night. That's what we get for being optimistic.


Instead we ended up pitching our tents and diving inside the moment as soon as humanly possible.  Cooking was done by unzipping just enough of the door zipper to get a hand out and this kept the number of mosquitos that made it into the tent and had to be hunted down and killed to a relatively manageable number. On the plus side we all enjoyed a massive amount of pleasure due to just being dry and being away from the majority of the mosquitos.


And wouldn't you know it the mosquitos were still out the following morning when we got moving at 4:45 am.  Nothing like headlamps and bug nets to start the day off right.


We packed up and retraced our steps back down to the drainage leading to Contact Pass where we deposited our camping gear and strapped on our daypacks.


From here we could see rocky terrain leading up to the SE face of Temple Crag.  There's a 4th class route located right on the pass called Contact Crack but we'd elected to do the normal 3rd class route since we were concerned about getting up and down before the promised afternoon storms.

The 3rd class route climbs the ramps in the center of the picture and cut right into the clear gully. Once it opens up you just aim for the rocks up above which is where it gets interesting.


Randy was feeling the altitude and elected to wait below to give us the best chance of making it back down off the summit before the expected weather hit. That left Gracia and I setting our best pace across the boulder field below the peak.


Up close there are several ramps leading up the face and more direct options going straight up.


After a few hundred feet we cut right into a chute that opened up into the talus field.


There were a number of visible use trails at this point as it's the descent route for the more technical routes in addition to a way up. We followed whatever made sense aiming for the rocks.


From there we could see our way to the summit. It's an interesting scramble but there's sadly not much of it.


Once you cross over the notch there's a short step across with solid handholds over a minor drop.


And then you climb up the ridge for a slightly exposed yet short section.


And then we were at the summit.




We were on the summit around 10 am. We spent some time looking couldn't find a summit register.


In addition to the excellent views back the way we'd come and up toward the palisades we had a rather unique view of Big Pine LakesThe peak on the left is the awesomely named yet slightly dull Cloudripper while the ridge on the right is named Skyhaven. I climbed both with Bob Burd on the Sierra Challenge a number of years ago and you can see the view from there here.


We were concerned about the building clouds and headed down after about 15 minutes on the summit. Reversing the ridge proved to be just as easy as the way up.


We made quick progress on the way down and by 11:45 we'd rejoined Randy and were on our way down the drainage.


The clouds continued to build but the expected thunder and rain didn't materialize.



Instead of retracing the route we'd taken up below the 10k camp we followed some ducks that stayed on the north side of the creek. This worked though it was a long boulder hop punctuated by the occasional bushwhacking and we did have one unavoidable boots of crossing near the Willow Lake.


We made it down by 7 pm giving us just enough time to drive down to Lone Pine and grab a quick burger at Whitney Cafe and make it home to Orange County by 12:30 am.

This week I had four whole days in town before leaving for a three day attempt at Mallory, Irvine, and Lone Pine the following weekend.

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1 comments

  1. Thank you for the write-up and the images. I have permits Oct 24th-26th, and feel some snow will have hit the mountain. Great Job, and much appreciated.

    ReplyDelete