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Mount Ishbel | 2011-07-24
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This is the one, the crazy ridge walker, Mark Evans wanted to do who lives in UK now. I hope he won’t be too jealous about this.
Approach:
We parked at Hillsdale Meadow Exhibit and went straight into bush. Bushwhacking was light and easy, only the problem we had was dealing with fallen trees. We were only aiming the south ridge of Ishbel, but unintentionally we were following Ranger Creek somewhat (We didn’t see the creek though). It’s only roughly 2 km so shouldn’t be too long.
Ridge:
At waypoint “Left Off Ridge” (GR859777) , we hit the first rock face (page 4). We went scrambler’s left walking along the rock face on a trail. This trail lost little bit of elevation and at the lowest point, we find a weakness in this rock face. We scrambled up the rock face and continued to scrambler’s left.
Eventually we could get up on top of the main ridge at waypoint Right Off Ridge 1 (GR859781). Here immediately we had to get off the ridge on scrambler’s right (east). For 1 km we stayed off the ridge. Originally we did it so because we saw elevation loss coming ahead, but by doing so we bypassed the crux which Nugara’s TR describes. This reduced the difficulty of this ridge from hardcore scrambling/alpine down to difficult scrambling. We regained the ridge at GR859786 (page 6). From this point on, there were lots of exposed/narrow/ridge scrambling for a while.
At the waypoint “Right Off Ridge 2”, which is roughly 200 m below the summit, the ridge looked more than scramble (page 14). As described in other trip reports, we got off the ridge, went scrambler’s right (east) again and used gravel/dirt ledge (page 15).
At the end of this ledge we scrambled straight up to the summit. It should be about 50 m in elevation from here. Ali’s and my GPS agreed that altitude at the summit was about 2870 m while official height is 2908 m. I think the official height is wrong.
Descent:
We went back the same way until the waypoint “Left Off Ridge”. Then we find our way down rather on SW slope via burned tree area to the meadow. Again just like ascent route, we still had to deal with dead trees. Also there were few rockbands on the way, we had to go left and right to avoid these. Personally I am not sure which route was better, ascent or descent route. I recommend the ascent route because at least it’s not as steep.
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