*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

June 25, 2016

Three Peak Attempt (Kishinena, Festubert, Lone) June 25, 2016

Well I had been looking to do this hike for quite some time and had researched it out pretty good and was all ready to go.  The weather was looking good, then the forecast changed, it said it was only going to rain the night before, so I thought I'd be fine.  Well I also had a few other friends that flaked out on me as well so it was just me and my son.  We woke up at 4:30 am and got on the trail by 6:30 am at Red Rock Canyon.  It was overcast but not raining, then as we took the trail towards snowshoe campground it started to spit a little, it never really rained heavily but just enough to be wet.  Anyways, we got to the Sage Pass trail marker and headed up to our ridge walk over the continental divide to summit Kishinena and Festubert.  Well the cloud cover never lifted and as we climbed we realized we were socked in pretty good and that it wasn't going to clear up.  Also as we hiked higher up to Sage Pass we realized that it had snowed in the higher elevations the night before.  So we eventually got to a false summit before the true summit and realized it wasn't safe.  The snow was wet from the rain we had been getting all morning and the visibility was terrible.  I didn't feel comfortable pushing ahead under those circumstances.  So we headed down to Twin Lakes and thought maybe Lone peak on the other side of the Bauerman Divide would be clearer??  So we headed down and got to Twin and ate lunch and went and visited Upper and Lower Twin Lakes just to say that we had been to both lakes.  Then we hiked over the Bauerman Divide and found out that it was just as socked in over there as it was at Kishinena.  So we decided that we would try and go up the South Kootenay Pass trail as we had never done it before and a friend of mine had tried finding the trail down a few days before and couldn't find it.  So we figured we'd try that and hoped that in so doing maybe the clouds would dissipate and maybe have another chance at Kishinena from the other side.  Well we noticed just like Sage Pass the snow got deeper as we climbed higher and the clouds got thicker as we climbed as well.  So we had the same problem as on Sage Pass.  Well by then we had hiked about 22 km for the day and my son's boots were wet and we figured it was enough for the day so we headed back to Red Rock via the Blakiston Valley trail.  Once we got low enough and in that valley the day turned beautiful.  We kept looking back and the clouds above our 3 peaks never dissipated until we reached the end of the trail and we noticed that Lone had opened up and if we had gone and tried that last peak we probably could have made it up.  Hindsight is always 20/20 eh!  It was a good day where I got to go on two trails I had never hiked on and got to visit Lower Twin Lake which I had never actually gone to either.  But I think I'll try this again in a few weeks when the weather is nicer!

All Socked in looking towards the slopes of Bauerman Peak

Heading up Sage Pass, looking down on Upper Twin Lake

This is about as far as we came, to slippery and couldn't see where we were going

I think there must have been about 1/2 foot of snow that fell at this elevation the night before

Lower Twin Lake with Bauerman's slopes behind

Looking down to Lower Twin Lake with the Snow Shoe trail valley behind

Crossing more snow after Twin Lakes to get up over Bauerman Divide

Looking up at the cliffs of Kishinena, after Twin Lakes and before Bauerman Divide

Unnamed lake that we named Scout Lake on a scout hike a few years earlier, notice we are still socked in with cloud cover

Scout lake, not a breath of wind

We stopped for a break here and I though the stream was pretty with the snow around it...pictures never do justice

Carter trying to dry his feet

Proof we made it to South Kootenay Pass

Looking down the Blakiston Valley from South Kootenay pass trail

The bear grass on the Blakiston Valley trail was spectacular.  

Another shot of the bear grass

More bear grass

The Blakiston valley trail was definitely more lush with flowers and vegetation that the Snow Shoe valley trail
Mapmyhike Track of Hike


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