Isabelle Peak 693642 Scramble on 18-Aug-2025
Participants: Tatyana, Stephanie, Matthew
Total time: 9h 50min, Distance: 20.29km, Total elevation gain: 1639m
To get a parking spot, the Ramblers arrived at the Floe Lake parking area by 7:20am, and the parking lots was nearly full. A note for future trips, be sure to get there early, as this is a popular destination for day hikers, campers, and trail runners.
We crossed the road and continued up Ball Pass trail for 7.5km, at this point we turned left, which was marked by a carin. We began the ascent up to Isabelle peak and soon our objective came into sight, after a small, but very manageable bushwack through the trees. We pushed to climber's left in the trees, which led to an open rock gully, and followed the gully all the way up to the ledges.
Once on the ledges, this is where the scrambling begins, there is lots of scrambling on this peak, but unlike may others in the Rockies, the rock is pleasant to manage, and does not constantly crumble under your hands and feet. Caution must still be taken, as rock fall is still a hazard, but in general, we all agreed that the rock was much better than we had experienced on many other peaks in the Rockies.
We worked our way up and to climbers left through the interesting terrain. Up to this point, there are no carin's marking the way, so it is a choose the terrain you like best. Once we reached the ridge, we followed the long, and clearly defined, and now carined trail to the final summit block.
Once at the crux described by Kane and many others, scramblers could choose to go to scramble up to their left or right, on the way up we all chose climber's left, which was a more vertical climb, but on the way down we chose skiers left (which is marked by a small carin). Once past the crux, we worked our way up the ledges, with crumbly rock on them, and again caution must be taken to not knock anything on party members.
When we exited the crux gully (note: which is a darker black rock compared to the rest, and is easily distinguishable), we traversed to our left and to the final summit block, working our way up and to climber's left around the base of it and up the backside.
On the summit we enjoyed a quick lunch, due to chilly weather and higher winds. The summit took us around 5 hours to reach.
On the way down, we cautiously retraced our steps in the gully, this time choosing to go to skiers right to avoid the very vertical down climb. Although, this was not much easier, one party member, chose to use the exposed ledges in front to avoid a very large step with minimal hand and footholds, while Stephanie used all of her flexibility and reach to make it down the crux with the assistance of Matt.
Once past the crux we followed the trail and ridge back down to the front side of the mountain, and worked our way down and to skiers right to get into a gully with some steps to aid our decent, and save our knees. Unfortunately, scree to ski down is nowhere to be found, and we needed to just be patient and take our time to get down the mountain and back to the trees, leading us back to Ball Pass.
Once back on Ball Pass trail, we simply followed the trail out back to the vehicles.