UKC

I will be in Andalsnes Norway for 10 days from June 18th and I am looking for some ideas of great days out I could do. Specifically some peaks that I could climb solo. The Romsdalshornet looks great but I'm not sure if it is do-able solo. Any ideas greatly appreciated. Stephen

In reply to goatee:

The Romsdalhorn is by its easiest route (the South Ridge) involves scrambling with sections of Diff-V.Diff so probably not ideal solo though I haven't done it. I climbed the N Face and abseiled back down it.
Bispen however would be fine to solo. The SW face ordinary route is described as "an easy scramble" in the Tony Howard guide, again I haven't done it but I did descend the North Ridge which was fine to solo, similar in difficulty to say the Crib Goch/Snowdon traverse.

In reply to goatee:

As mentioned Bispen is good, the ridge overlooking the parking (South East Ridge?) is scrambling with some steeper steps and a fine ridge at the top. Store Trolltinden is the highest peak in the area and great summit plus you get to look down the Troll Wall. When I did it I was only the 4th person on the summit book that year,


Chris

In reply to Chris Craggs:

Thanks guys. I will look at that those. Looking forward to it now

In reply to goatee:
Gjuratinden/Juratinden east of Isfjorden should be possible to climb solo if you're experienced. You might need a rope for a short rappell from the top.

Store Venjetinden/Vengetinden south of Isfjorden is also possible to climb solo via the normal route if the conditions are good.

Romsdalshorn is also climbed without rope by some people but I think everyone will rappell down via anchors in the north wall.

In reply to goatee: There are plenty to choose from. Apart from norgeskart.no for maps search out fjordpeaks.com - Arnt Flatmo has been up most everything and his info is super reliable.

What are you happy scrambling, soloing?

In reply to goatee:

Bispen is the central peak, the SE Ridge is the left arete:

http://www.pbase.com/chris_craggs/image/56960481

Store Trolltinden from 'the other' side:

http://www.pbase.com/chris_craggs/image/56960497


Chris

In reply to


I wouldn't recommend abseiling down the North Wall if you hadn't already climbed up it, the anchors would be very difficult to find, indeed even finding the first anchor would be very hard. Trying to find the correct route whilst climbing up, armed with both a description and too was tricky enough!

In reply to SturlaS:

Many thanks for that. A lot to check out there.

In reply to wbo:

Happy scrambling Grade 3 or maybe a bit harder. I won't have a rope with me (I will be carrying enough) so any rappels won't be do-able,
Stephen

In reply to goatee:
Also ut.no will have some routes with descriptions. This is an example -.... http://www.ut.no/tur/2.2038/ It is a little bit tricky to learn to 'drive' the site, but when you have worked out how it works then there is a lot of good info.

This is the general page in ut.no for the area. I tend to stay at the south end of Sunnmore but am now very motivated to tick some new hills

http://www.ut.no/omrade/4.1265/

In reply to Chris Craggs:

I managed to have an epic coming down from Bispen back around 2000. We ended up too far to the right of the correct descent gully & ended up spending several hours heading down through nasty talus covered ledge systems & ended with an entertaining abseil off unconvincing anchors in the dark.

My first foreign climbing trip featuring a pair of incompetents with a 60m single who had never really been outside the peak apart from a couple of trade routes in N wales.

tl;dr: Read the guidebook

In reply to goatee:

As others have said, Bispen is your best bet for a solo ascent. Both the south ridge and the north ridge are very good. The normal descent route is OK, but not nearly as good quality with quite a lot of loose rock and scree. Best bet for a good round trip would be up the Grade II Inf south ridge, and down the Grade I north ridge (there's one very exposed section which would be a grade III scramble in UK, so it's quite tough for Grade I UIAA) It's quite a long way back beside the lake of Bispevatn, but very beautiful. The mountain has a very fine knife edge rock ridge summit. (Have been up there three times now: twice in 1969, and once again exactly 40 years later.)

In reply to goatee:

I seem to remember coming down off Kongen was just an easy scramble after we'd done the South Face, so presumably easy going up!

In reply to melocoton:

We also had some problems finding the bottom anchor the first time we rappelled down (in the dark). This anchor you don't pass when climbing up the wall.
The top anchor was easy to find (maybe we were lucky?). This anchor is also not used when climbing up the wall.

In reply to SturlaS:


I only found the last anchor by chance because, as you say, it isn't on the climb up.


I only found this one because I saw some people ahead of us using it otherwise I'd have had no idea it was there. As it was, we had to downclimb a scrambly ptich to get to it which I wouldn't have liked to solo or perhaps there was another, even higher anchor?
Either way, I don't think its a sensible option for a solo unless you're way within your comfort zone.