A telephoto of
Istinden´s South face taken from Ura in Kjosen.
Istinden was first
climbed by William Cecil Slingsby and Geoffrey Hastings (UK) on July
13th
1898.
Slingsby and Hastings started from Jægervatnet and walked up
Stortinddalen/Gárjelvággi towards Tyttebærdalen.
They reached the summit via the North buttress.
"In 1897, Hastings had seen the
Kjostind (actually
Istinden)from
several places and rightly concluded that it was the most suitable mountainfor us to begin with, as,
from its summit, a most comprehensive view of the mountains both north
and south of the Kjosfjord could be obtained. This we proved to be the case, but
the principal feature of the ascent of this really fine peak was our
entire corroboration of the truth of the twentieth
proposition of the first book of Euclid, which we worked out most
patiently, most stubbornly, and most painfully, and we proved
after 3 ½ hours of hard plodding, to which a twelve-year-old
schoolboy is a stranger, that the two sides of the triangle
which we traversed to the base of our peak, and which cost us 19
½ hours to accomplish, were greater than the one side which
we followed with weary footsteps on our return, but which,
nevertheless, only absorbed 5 hours . The classically-minded
member of our party apparently considered the working out of this
problem to be beneath his notice; certain it is
that he turned back to camp when we had reached the end of the first
side. When climbing up the crags a few
hundred feet below the summit of Kjostind Hastings paid me the one
compliment with which he has ever honoured me,
and I am yery proud of it. It was in the good Yorkshire dialect in
which we sons of the North are so fond of indulging
when out on the fells, and was merely “Thar´t a toff un.” The
summit of Kjostind (5,680 ft.) is a beautiful snow dome, and
the views were exquisite. While Hastings photographed, I carefully
studied the northern mountains, and was able to solve one
or two orographical puzzles. Our return was enjoyable despite our
fatigues. We had a magnificent glissade down a
long snow gully; we discovered four hitherto unknown lakes, two of
which are formed by huge ancient terminal moraines.
All of these drain into the Stortinddal. We passed hundreds of
reindeer, and had a most romantic walk past the lakes
into the big valley. and 34 ½ hours after leaving camp were
welcomed back by Haskett-Smith."
William C. Slingsby: Mountaineering In Arctic Norway, Alpine Journal
1899.
The second
ascent was made just one week later - on July 20th 1898 - by Elizabeth Main (a.k.a. Aubrey Le Blond)
(UK)
and the Swiss guides Josef and Emil Imboden. They also made a possible
second ascent of Store
Kjostinden on the same day:
Having descended to the saddle, we
looked about for the best
route up the other peak, the Kjostind (actually Istinden). We
first thought of ascending by
the ridge from the saddle, but eventually decided that a better and quicker way
was to cross the glacier,
gain the rock ridge beyond, turn sharp to the left at the
top, and follow it to the
summit of the peak. This plan succeeded admirably, and
the first few feet of the
rocky wall furnished some very pretty scrambling. At 3.30 P.M. we reached the first of
the series of stone
sentinels, which Mr Slingsby's party had placed at intervals all
round the wall of rock which
supports the snow-cap. It led one to think that after a few
hours on a mountain-top the
member of the party who wields neither the camera nor the
plane- table must be glad of
some active employment. We were singularly favoured by the
weather, and sat a long time
on the summit, while
Imboden devised safe and speedy routes up the scores of magnificent peaks which
sur- rounded us. Here, a roky needle
reminded us of the Aiguille
du Dru. There a great rock-ribbed mountain, plastered with
glacier, seemed another Barre
des Ecrins. To the south, the huge snowy mass of the
Yoeggevarre resembled Mont
Blanc. But another feature was present, never seen in
Alpine views. The Lake of
Thun looks exquisitely lovely at early morning from the
Jungfrau. But no lake can
match the heavenly blue of the fjords as they stretch mile after
mile, away amidst
snow-crowned mountains, away to the distant, island-gemmed Arctic
Ocean. Such a view as I saw
from the Kjostind my eyes had never rested on before;
it alone was worth a longer
journey than I had made from England.
It was a beautiful walk over calm, farstretching uplands back to Lyngseidet that
evening, and at 8.30 we were down
there once more.
(Aubrey
Le Blond: Mountaineering In The Land of the Midnight Sun, 1908)
Urdkjerringa
(1399) to the left and Istinden (1495) to the right as
seen from Ura in Kjosen.
