*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

May 09, 2018

Mt. Royal Sweet Grass Hills May 5, 2018

Well today being my birthday it was time for another hike.  Today was a family hike and for the 2nd weekend in a row we headed to the Sweet Grass Hills south of the border.  We had been up pretty late the night before and didn't get out as early as I would have liked.  We eventually made it and started our hike.  Some of the kids were not excited today to be hiking.  Anyways our goal to start the day was to maybe summit both Mt. Royal and Mt. Brown and to visit a cave along the way.  Well we got to the cave first and from there I realized the entire party wasn't going to make it.  So my oldest son and I started for Mt. Royal and left everyone else at the cave.  The cave was kind of neat but there was a lot of animal poop, so we didn't stay long.  Well the rest of the summit seemed to be going well then we got to within the last few 100 feet from the summit and it turned awful.  It was a north facing slope that was covered in pretty thick trees and the snow hadn't melted yet and at times it was waist deep.  It was a pretty good grunt the last little bit and the snow was wet and the post holing was awful.  Anyways we summited and realized we wouldn't be making it to Mt. Brown so headed down a different way to avoid the north treed slope.  We got down rejoined the rest of the family and hiked back to the vehicle.  I usually take a panorama from the summit, but the summit view was obstructed by so many trees and radio towers I figured it wasn't worth the picture.

Start of Hike

Cluster of flowers at the beginning

View of the east side of the East Butte comples

Looking back at our vehicle

Slowly rising above the prairie

Now into the trees

Open meadow on the way up

This almost looks like a trail in the rockies

The black hole in the rocks is the skylight of the cave

Inside the cave

Outside the cave my son in the middle is standing by the entrance you have to crawl into

Another shot looking back at the cave.  The meadow below would be a great place to stay if there wasn't so much cow manure around

Our goal for the day Mt. Royal

This was the beginning of the snowy trees north slope slog to the summit

This was a rare open spot where the snow wasn't as deep and we actually could see Mt. Brown behind us which looked much easier to approach from here!

On top looking west towards Gold Butte on left and West Butte in the middle

Another view of Mt. Brown which would have been so much easier from this view...next time eh!

All the radio equipment on top of Mt. Royal...kind of ruined the view

View to what is called the East Butte on some maps (east of Mt. Royal)

The cave is in the center of this picture and the high hill in the background is called Mt. Lebanon

On the way back walking through the forested area

Another flower picture

Back on prairie

A cairn where we parked our vehicle looking at East Butte summit behind the cairn

This is the gate to access this area.  We needed to get permission to enter this private land and were grateful the Meissner Ranch was so nice in letting us enter for the day.

This is the Ranch to ask permission to access the trail head.  It is located a few miles south of the gate where you start



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