*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

July 23, 2022

Crypt Lake July 16, 2022 Waterton Lakes National Park Alberta

 So when people ask me if I want to go hiking I usually don't say no, especially when a summit is involved, but today was a family excursion for a few family members that hadn't done Crypt before, so I couldn't say no even though there was no summit involved.  According to my records this was the 8th time I've done the Crypt Lake hike and well, every time there is something new and beautiful to see.  Anyways not to add for details of this hike but we did see a bear, probably the closest I've ever been to one.  The bear grass and flowers were amazing and the lake still had ice on it which made the swim that much colder!

Beautiful morning, a little breezy but we still decided to take our Canoe and Kayak across for our party of 6 people, I hate having to rush back for the shuttle

It took us about 45 minutes to Canoe across to Crypt Landing against the wind

Nice little view through the trees

We saw many flowers but I've never seen this one before, it is called Mountain Lady's Slipper and you see why they call it that, very cool to see a new flower

I've never gone down to the 2nd water fall (called twin falls) but I did this time and it didn't disappoint, also felt nice to get the mist on my face to cool me down

Perfectly place bear grass for this picture

Cave Entrance, we missed the bottle neck of people... just barely

The exit, this is where we saw everyone waiting for us to go through

Very cold, didn't stay in long

The large sheet of ice left on the west side of the lake

Daddy and daughter picture

Canoe ride home with the wind!

Bear Video







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Mount Carthew Night Summit July 8-9, 2022 Waterton Lakes National Park Alberta

 So it has been a while since I did a summit, maybe my longest break in a while.  This past winter has been busy and I've decided that I'm going to run a marathon this year so my training lately has been a lot of running and much less hiking.  Anyways with my training schedule I find it hard to hike and then run the next day but I'll try and squeeze in the odd hike this summer.  So this one was a fairly last minute idea, I got a group together and headed for a sunset summit.  We didn't quite make the true summit of Carthew for the sunset, but we got high enough to see the sunset and it was really nice.  After the sunset we reached what some people refer to as Carthew Minor and it was a nice view from there and then pushed on to the true Carthew Summit.  It was about 11pm before we hit the true summit and the sky was still light but we had our headlamps on at this point.  The wind was a little chilly on top so our summit stay wasn't too long.  We headed down to regain the Carthew-Alderson Summit trail but had to reclimb a bit as we hit a huge snow patch that we didn't feel safe traversing in the dark.  Once on the trail it was smooth sailing until we hit another snow drift on the trail just before we got to Summit Lake.  It was huge and was probably about 15 feet tall in some sections.  We eventually found an easy way up and over it but had to do the old kick in and climb up, except we didn't have any ice axes which would have made it a little safer cause if we slipped we were sliding down for a while.  All in all a great trip and got home at like 4am!

Start of hike at the always Beautiful Cameron Lake

First snow pack we had to cross

That drift there is what we had to go around on our way back, see last picture

The sunset

Carthew Minor

The ridge we kept on to the summit in the distance

This drift actually made this ridge walk pleasant

Getting darker but the view was still spectacular

Another shot of the night sky

First view of Carthew Lakes, look at all the snow around the lake

Summit Silhouette picture

Long exposure shot with the moon over Mt. Custer from Carthew Summit

Summit Picture

Another long exposure shot from the summit looking towards Alderson

That drift we had to get around, it will take a while to melt that thing!

Sunset Timelapse

Carthew Minor Summit Video






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