*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

September 03, 2016

Cloudy Ridge Waterton September 3, 2016

Today the plan was to try and summit two peaks, the first was Cloudy and the second was Glendowan.  Well as Waterton weather is very unpredictable we were only able to summit Cloudy. Which maybe was a good thing because I don't think one can traverse the ridge connecting Cloudy and Glendowan.  We didn't get a real great view of that ridge from Cloudy but it looks tough, so it was maybe good that we didn't try it today.  Anyways about the hike we got about half way up the mountain when it started to rain and then eventually snow.  The wind was blowing like crazy and it was almost blizzard like conditions.  Luckily we were able to seek shelter on an east facing overhanging cliff band.  We did get a little chilled as we waited for probably a good 30-45 minutes and as a result I had to get out an emergency reflective blanket and we three hikers all "snuggled" under that to keep a little warmer.  Eventually the sky cleared and we had intermittent clear skies and terrible blowing snow and poor visibility the rest of the way.  Once we reached the summit we did have a few minutes here or there of clear views but not for very long.  We then headed down the same way we came and once we reached red rock canyon the weather had turned quite pleasant.  Good day and one more summit off the list...two left now.

Heading up the grass slope after Red Rock Canyon and doing a little bush whacking

Anderson Peak in the clouds

Beginning of the snow

Trying to stay warm in the snow storm

The west side of this tree covered in snow from the wind blowing so hard in that direction

Mountains all covered in snow...if we could actually see them through the clouds

Snowy ridge

Clouds opened up from time to time and we could see stuff around us, this was Dungarvan Peak coming into view

Nearing the summit block

Last corner in the clouds just before the summit block

We fixed the Cairn

Looking west towards what we had hoped to climb up...looks impassable to me from here

On the summit with the new fixed up Cairn

Another view looking west to where we had planned hiking earlier in the day

I usually don't push rocks down the mountain but we were truly the only ones on it today so we rolled a few down.  This one we tried moving for like 20-30 minutes and eventually gave up... it was too big.

Last shot of the ridge we had hoped to climb over.  Maybe we'll try it from the other way when I do Glendowan in the future.
Short video of storm

First Panorama (cloudier) of Summit




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