*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 08, 2020

Tornado Mountain July 29, 2020 Dutch Creek, Alberta

 So today we tackled a big one.  Tornado Mountain is the first mountain over 10,000 feet north of the U.S. border in the Canadian Rockies.  I got a first good look at Tornado back in the spring when we hiked Thunder Mountain and today we got to hike it.  The approach on this hike is grueling, it consisted of a 12-13 km bike ride on a road that could have been drive-able 5 years ago pre NDP.  The NDP wanted to limit quadding in these areas and dug out these huge burms in the road about every 50-100 meters.  I think we counted over 70 of them.  So on the way up we had to dismount our bikes and walk over each one of them.  On the way back we could ride over them.  Once we dropped our bikes we were actually on the GTD (Great Divide Trail).  It was actually a really pretty hike through the trees at that point up to the Col which is the Alberta/B.C. border.  From the Col we had a pretty steep exhausting hike up the remainder of the mountain.  There was some tricky route finding involved and eventually we summited and boy was I tired, and not looking forward to the hike down and bike ride out.  Well after re hydrating a bunch and eating the trip out wasn't as bad as anticipated.  It still made for a very long day and a hike that I can honestly say is a one and done and that I probably won't do that again.  I would do it again if the approach on bike could have been driven....thanks NDP.

The start of our bike ride, one of the burms was in the middle of photo

Gould Dome on the left, I would like to try that one soon as well

More biking (walking) through the forest

The GDT marker

Heading up to the Col

This is where I ate lunch and re topped up my water supply

Heading up the steep scree, looking towards Gould Dome and Crowsnest Mountain in the distance

Survey marker on the top of Tornado

Great views all around, this is looking north

On descent looking south again

Beautiful stream area on the GDT

Sun almost setting behind Gould Dome

Track of Hike





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