*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

December 26, 2016

Forum Ridge Snowshoeing December 26, 2016

Well today I hooked up with an old friend and we headed out on a snowshoeing adventure.  We left Raymond early and headed up to Waterton.  We had a beautiful sunrise on the drive and then decided upon attempting to get up Forum Ridge between Forum Lake and Cameron Lake.  I know of a bunch of people that go up there split boarding and figured if they can get up I'll try snowshoeing.  Well we drove to the barricade on the Cameron Lake road and started our journey.  We headed to the Akamina trail and took it as far as the B.C./Alberta border and then headed south on the cut-line.  It was pretty easy going at first blazing our trail (being the first set of tracks since the newly fallen snow from Christmas Eve/Day).  We eventually came to a very daunting steep section.  It was probably only about 50 meters of hiking but it was like straight up.  It probably took us close to two hours wading through waist deep snow on a crazy incline.  According to my tracker at one point it was a 49% incline.  I've hiked on loose scree where you feel like you go one step forward and two back, but this was like one step forward and like 4 back.  It was so exhausting, and the hiking poles were doing nothing cause they would never hit bottom anywhere.  We zigzagged, we tried using the trees and branches to pull us up, eventually I took off my snow shoes and that seemed to help, but just a little.  We eventually made it over that steep section and noticed that it was after 1:00 pm.  So we hiked a bit more but the clearing on the south of the ridge never came and so we got high enough to get a good view back of the valley behind us and got a sliver of a glimpse of Cameron Lake and Akamina Lake.  We then turned back and it was much faster on the way down.  For the steep section we just slide down on our butts and that section only took us about 5 minutes.  We eventually made it back to the vehicle and drove home.  Good time with a great friend!  I usually take more pictures but it was so cold that my battery on my camera died.

Beautiful Sunrise on Old Chief

Sunrise on Sofa Mountain

At the Alberta/B.C. border sign, notice how much snow is on top of that!

Fresh snow untouched up the cut-line

Looking down the cut-line

Our steep section

About as high as we got, Cameron Lake below with Carthew Peak on the left

Caught a glimpse of Mt. Custer in the distance as the clouds cleared for a moment

Sun broke through for just a second

On the way down the steep section

Looking back at that steep section, not sure if you can see our sliding path

There was so much snow on the trees today, beautiful

Following our tracks home on the cut-line
 
Map my hike track of hike


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