*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 01, 2016

Mt. Richards August 30, 2016

Well this was a tough day.  My son and I got up early and headed to Waterton, it was going to be a hot day so I wanted to start early.  Well we got to the trail head and started getting ready when my son realized he forgot his hiking boots...well we called my wife and we met her half way between home and the park.  Anyways once all was said and done we didn't get started on the trail till about 9:30 am, instead of the 8 am start we had hoped for.  So we hiked up to Bertha Lake and got to the lake by about 10:30.  We made pretty good time getting up there, we just maybe went a little to fast because we were pretty tired the rest of the day. We had tried this hike 3 years earlier with my brothers and had only got to the false summit just below the true summit.  Anyways, I found another way to gain the true summit so this route is what we took today.  The hike was pretty hard and was slow going.  We eventually reached the summit but not till about 4:15 pm.  It was a hot hazy day but the view was still spectacular.  There were a bunch of bugs on the summit so we didn't stay long and luckily we had cell phone reception so I could call my wife to say we were running a little late.  We descended the south side of the mountain and we didn't get back to the car till 9 pm and the sun had been set for about 40 minutes.  Even though it was a tough day, I'm glad we got this one crossed off my list.  Now only 3 left to go!

Bertha Lake was calm and beautiful today

Heading up the ridge looking down on Bertha Lake and Alderson Peak in the distance

Gained the ridge and got a great view of Vimy and Upper Waterton Lake

Looking down to Cleveland from the ridge of Richards (see the haze)

Looking down on Waterton town site

The ridge walk was pretty tough but had some great views along the way

Now on the south east ridge coming around to the south ridge

Looking back at the ridge we came from (the ridge on the left was too steep to climb hence we went around it and came up the south ridge of Richards)

Once we got around the south east ridge we could see the summit but we had to get around one more ridge to reach the route to the top

Finally we can see what is left, we approached the summit on the right (east) side and came down on the left (west)

View of Bertha Lake from the Summit

On top (all the small spots in the picture are bugs!)

Summit view was great, too bad it was hazy (looking towards Vimy)

Coming down was slow initially on the cliff bands, then got really good and faster when the scree was nice and loose then towards the end it was very slow.

This was the easy section coming down

Found a little pool all dried up in this creek bed we followed down

Cut line picture almost back in Canada

Here is my proof of how hot and sweaty I was on this day.  My "Swass" (Ass Sweat) as I call it was still quite visible after getting home almost 2 hours after finishing the hike

Photo sphere picture looking down on Waterton Lake

Panorama on Summit

Photo sphere picture looking down on Bertha Lake

Video on Summit

Mapmyhike Track of Hike
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