*I hope people use their own wise judgement when hiking always plan ahead and be prepared. One should never go beyond their abilities.*

Over the years I've had a few goals my first was to Summit all the Peaks of Waterton. Here is My Waterton Summit List I completed that goal on September 26, 2016.

My next goal I'm still working on and that is to summit the 6 10,000 foot Summmits of Glacier National Park. I have one left Kintla.

My 2018 Goal that I accomplished was to summit 40 peaks in my 40th year and that I finished on September 26, 2018.

Not sure what will be my next goal, once Glacier's Summits are done?

I commonly use 3 Hashtags on my social media. The first one is #itookthepathlesstraveledby which is to reference this blog. The next two relate to my father and grandfather who were also hikers. #milesformarkellingson is to remember my
Dad, Mark Ellingson and #dustfromthetrailandhowitsettledonme is to remember my Grandfather Earl Ellingson

December 29, 2015

Blakiston Summer 1996

This was a very memorable hike.  A group of friends decided we wanted to hike Blakiston.  None of us had ever hiked the mountain and we really didn't know where we were going.  Some of us had just graduated from High School and this was one of my first times using my Minolta 35mm film camera, I had got for graduating, on a hike.  I wasn't very good at taking pictures as you can see from how blurry some pictures are.  Young people don't remember the challenge of film cameras that you never new how the picture turned out till you actually developed the pictures.  Anyways we headed up the trail that day.  We had talked to someone who told us to go up and over the Lineham Cliff first and then it is an easy summit.  Well we did it, and survived.  The Lineham Cliff is a sketchy trail that the park doesn't suggest using anymore.  We were young and dumb and we did it anyways.  As we neared the summit the weather got really nasty and cold.  At times we could see icicles on the rocks, it was below freezing and it was windy.  As a result we didn't stay at the top very long and quickly came down the drainage basin south of the summit.  We should have taken this route up but we learned the hard way.  Once we reached the Lineham Cliff trail below the weather was pleasant and a lot warmer.  I'm sure we had at least a 20-25 degrees celcius difference in temperature from the top to the bottom.  I don't think I've had that extreme on any other hike.


Getting ready to traverse the Lineham Cliff

This was the sketchiest part where you have to straddle the cliff, and below you is like a 100 foot drop

Almost at the top of the cliff we had to take a cliff shot, pictures never do justice

Scaling the cliff just north of the waterfall

A little cave on the ridge between Hawkins and Blakiston

Coming up the north side of the ridge between Hawkins and Blakiston with red rock canyon below us

Summit in view but clouded over

Some of the icicle's we saw

We also had to hike through some snow near the top

False summit near the top getting pretty tired but almost there

Summit Cairn in view

Freezing cold and windy but loving it

This was about the only direction from on top that we could see anything, this is looking down towards Crandell Lake campground

Coming down looking towards Lineham Lakes

Coming down, blurry shot

Not sure what we are doing here?

Group shot looking towards Lineham Lakes

Found a little snow shelter to hide under

At the end, mission accomplished

Approximate path we took for the hike

Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)