Mount Ishbel

Mount Ishbel – September 2, 2007

Mountain height:           2849 m
Elevation gain:             1450 m
Ascent time:                  6:00
Descent time:                5:15

Scrambling with Raff.

If you like nail-biting, testicle-tingling exposure, Mount Ishbel is for you! The route can be scrambled (no rope), but is extremely narrow in several sections and has innumerable other sections where even a minor mistake or slip would send you instantly plummeting down either side of the south ridge. Raff and I took a rope and I be lying if I said I hadn’t thought about using it on numerous occasions throughout the ascent. Fortunately, most of the scrambling is technically easy and we managed to keep the rope in my backpack.

There were two crux sections on our ascent route: the first, a significant narrowing of the ridge for about 10 m, where bum-shuffling was your only viable way across; the second, a short, steep upclimb where you are forced over to the left side of a wall with nothing but air below you.

Approaching the summit, we both decided to take the easy ledge route on the east side of the mountain as suggested in two of the three trip reports we brought along. A day after, I’m kinda’ regretting that decision and will probably return someday to finish the trip via the ridge. The ledge makes a good descent route, although even it is exposed.

The summit view was outstanding. Even though a number of 11,000ers were prominent, the plethora of unnamed summits to the northeast, east, and southeast were far more interesting to look at. Having received several unfavourable reviews of the east ridge descent route, we returned the same way we came. This was fairly straightforward and although descending the second crux mentioned above was quite unnerving, we were able to bypass the first on easy terrain below the ridge. We were making pretty good time until I decided to try an alternate descent route near the end of the ridge. It turned out to be too difficult and I wasted about 20-30 minutes searching for a solution before pulling out the rope to rappel the route. Raff avoided this by descending where we came up. A good day out on a delightful (?) route.