*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

August 24, 2017

Cooper Spur of Mount Hood August 22, 2017

Well the fires are sure ruining a lot of hiking this year.  So we traveled down to Oregon for my nieces wedding and so my brother and I had wanted to do a hike but because of fires and closed areas we couldn't do our planned hike of Middle Sister, so we had to improvise and try something else.  So instead we decided to see how high we could get on Mt. Hood without using gear.  So we decided to go up an approach called Cooper Spur.  My brother had hiked some of it before and it said that we would could easy get to about 9000 feet.  So my son and brother headed out one morning to try and see how high we could go.  We knew we wouldn't make it to the top but we'd see how high we could get.  We drove to Cloud Cap campground and started hiking from there.  We headed up through a nice treed area first and then eventually lost all shade and headed up to about 8800 feet.  The transition from tree to baron volcano ash and rock was cool.  I'm used to hiking on the rocky mountains but this ash and rock mixture was weird.  Reminded me a lot of when we hiked on Mt. St. Helen's.  It was completely void of any vegetation.  It was also very sandy at times and actually made it more labor intensive because you didn't have the push off from the rocks as you stepped but had a little cushion.  I think it is like the difference of running on a turf field as opposed to a harder surface.  There is cushion in the turf  but not on the harder surface as a result the track speed is slower on the turf.  As we climbed we had an OK view of the mountain even though it was smokey.  We really couldn't see anything around us which is a shame because the views I hear are spectacular.  We had a great view of the Eliot Glacier on our north side as we hiked and the crevasses were amazing to see in the glacier.  We eventually got to our high point, saw all the snow ahead and decided that was our day and turned back around.  As we descended we noticed the smoke got thicker and we were glad we had a little clearer view.

First view once the trees cleared of Mt. Hood

Cooper Spur shelter (my camera got some condensation in it, hence the not so clear pictures)

Nearing the top of the Spur

Father and son on the high point for the day

Our "Summit" or high point picture

Coming down, look at the crevasses on the right

View looking down where we came of how void of vegetation this area was

The sandiest part of the hike, almost like walking on the beach
Panorama on Cooper Spur







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