*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

June 13, 2020

5th Sister June 10, 2020 Crowsnest Pass Alberta

Today we planned on going and trying Window mountain, but once we got view of the approach and how much snow there was we decided that was not possible, so we figured we'd try on of the 7 Sisters behind Crowsnest Mountain and we went for the 5th Sister.  I had seen these what I though were little piles of rock behind Crowsnest mountain before but until you get to them you don't realize just how big they are.  Supposedly the 2nd Sister is the only one that has no known ascent.  The others are all technical climbs except for the 5th sister which is not technical but still quite steep and not for the faint of heart.  The approach is the same as Crowsnest mountain except you go straight up instead of turning to the right at one point.  There was a fair amount of route finding along the way and the rock is really crumbly and the meandering through the various rock piles and towers is quite neat to do. Eventually you make your way to the north side of the 5th Sister and climb a craggy steep cliff to the top.  The view from the top over to Crowsnest mountain is spectacular and worth the entire trip.  Return the same way you came and watch for rock falling on the people below you.

Where we left the Crowsnest Mountain trail and headed straight up, at the snow in the middle we went right along the black cliff band till we found the open gully to the summit ridge

View looking towards the ridge between the Sisters and Crowsnest Mountain

Heading along the Black Cliff band heading south toward the open gully

End of the Black Cliff band and coming up the gully

Finding our way up the gully in and out of crumbly rocks and towers

Looking down the gully we came up

Crazy cliffs and crumbling towers

On the summit ridge looking east towards the Livingston Range

Sisters 2, 3, can't really see 4 and 5 from R-L

Sister #2 you can see why nobody has climbed this

Coming up the North side of Sister 5 looking back down

Top of Sister #5, we rebuild the cairn

The awesome view of Crosnest Mountain with Sisters 1-4 below us as well

Heading down the north side of Sister 5

Another view on our way down Sister 5

One last look back at the Sisters

Heading back on the summit ridge towards the gully we would descend

Crowsnest Mountain still had a fair amount of snow on it and would have been tricky to do this early before the snow melted more

At the end looking back at the Sisters

Track of Hike

Summit Video



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