*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 21, 2018

Victoria Peak and Ridge South Castle May 21, 2018

A few months ago I thought it would be neat to hike Victoria Peak on Victoria Day.  So today came around and we went and did it.  At the start of the day I figured the peak alone would be good enough, but after making good time to get to the top we figured lets go for the Ridge as well.  Well it was a long, long day.  In total 27+ km's and 10+hours of hiking.  I'm exhausted, but it was a spectacular day.  The few downsides were that I forgot the sunscreen and will be paying for that for a few days.  I got a sweet head band sunburn!  The summit of the Peak was so beautiful, hardly a breath of wind, we didn't stay long however, because of the bugs on top.  No wind usually means bugs.  The traverse to the ridge was quite pleasant, it was just long and luckily the remaining snow was packed enough that we didn't have to post hole much.  However, once we started descending after the Ridge the trail was hard to find in all the snow.  Luckily we saw some tracks that helped with that.  We later noticed that these tracks were bear tracks and they were pretty fresh.  Anyways we continued but made more noise.  We followed the tracks for probably about 5-6 km.  He was pretty good and keeping on the trail and we figured it was his sense of knowing the neighborhood.  If it had been up to us we would have spent way more time trying to find the trail through all the snow.  It would have taken us way longer.  Great day except maybe next time I'll bring a bike as well the 7 or 8 extra kilometers of walking could have been a lot easier.

The beginning of our 3.5 km walk Victoria Peak right of center

This is where we started our scramble

A bunch of dead trees on the way up, must have had a forest fire years ago.  Pincher ridge behind

First of our snow for the day

Starting to see more summits all around.  Victoria Ridge on far right.

Last climb before the summit

First view of Windsor ridge and Castle Peak...Awesome view all day

Our next goal to go down the ridge on the ridge and traverse to the peak on the left

Summit Photo on Victoria Peak

Another view of Windsor and Castle.  Once we got to Victoria Peak, Windsor Peak would block Castle Peak, that shows how far we climbed back in there

Luckily the snow hadn't melted much and was still hard enough to walk on without any problem

Heading over to the false summit on the left

Once on the false summit this is what we saw.  It was probably the worst false summit ever!

Summit of Victoria Ridge, number 2 summit for the day

Looking west into B.C.

Looking north to Windsor and Castle, notice how Castle is almost hidden

Tracks of our bear friend that we followed

This is why we kept loosing the trail, still covered in snow in places

Fun little snow pack we were able to slide down and yes the bear tracks also slid down this hill!








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