A telephoto of Store Kjostinden taken from Lyngenfjorden. Istinden to the right.
A brief route description of the North ridge route: follow Rottenvikbreen up to the saddle (1300) between Store Kjostinden and Istinden (1495).
Beware of deep crevasses! From the saddle follow the North ridge to the summit. Easy scrambling with a few steep sections here and there.
Climbed by Bjørn Arntzen and Geir Jenssen, 20. August 1988.
It is not known who made the first ascent of Store Kjostinden, but it must have been many years before Elizabeth Main (a.k.a. Aubrey Le Blond),
Josef and Emil Imboden made a possible second ascent on July 20th 1898:
"A ridge of loose rocks led from our haltingplace to the top, and before long we saw that all was plain sailing before us. The summit
itself is a long, stony plateau, very like the top of the Romsdalshorn. As we neared the highest point, which is the cliff overhanging
the Kjosenfjord, the guides hung back and urged me to step first on to it. But in the end “Jerico " got the better of us. I always
felt that somehow the mountain had an unpleasant surprise hidden away. And so he had, for as we set foot on the topmost rock
there lay beneath our eyes a very small, very old, but undoubtedly humanly-constructed stone man! Who was our predecessor ?
When was he here? By what route did he ascend ? No one knows, but from the look of the stones it must have been many years ago."
(Aubrey Le Blond: Mountaineering In The Land of the Midnight Sun, 1908)
The same party also made the second ascent of Istinden on July 20th 1898, just days after William Cecil Slingsby and Geoffrey Hastings
made the first ascent of the peak.
