*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

April 29, 2018

West Butte Sweet Grass Hills Apr 28, 2018

The cooler temperatures this spring have made for less visits to the Rockies.  So today's forecast was to be a beautiful day and there is still a lot of snow pack in the mountains so I decided to go east and south to the Sweet Grass Hills.  I looked at some peoples trips on the internet and decided we could maybe get 3 peaks in one day.  So my boys and I headed out early and headed down the I-15.  We got to the start of the West Butte trail early and got that finished within about 3.5 hours.  It was a great little hike and the only down side was that it wasn't a really clear day.  It would have been pretty to see the snow caped Rockies in the distance.  Maybe another time we'll see that.  I also thought was a great place this would be to watch the sun set!  Quite a different landscape this hike was.  We started out on prairie grass and then had to tackle about half our elevation gain on a grassy slope.  Then about half way up we switched from grass to rock.  This was very large rock and very loose so it was hard to come down.  We saw lots of wild life and the view from the top was great.  The cairn on the top was very cool too, it was probably the most neat and organized cairn I have ever seen.  So once we finished this summit we tried going tot he next.  I had printed off directions from one other persons trip and it was going good until we got to within about 4 miles of the start of the trail head and we had to turn around because the Texas gate crossing was barricaded off.  We turned around and tried going up another road, but were unable to access there either.  We even tried stopping in at the little little town of Whitlash to ask the locals if there were any other way up...but to no success.  So we decided we'd have to come back another time and try them again.  All in all a successful day as we crossed off the highest of the Sweet Grass hills with maybe more to come in the future.

View from the beginning

View of Gold Butte to the East

Bald Prairie looking back as we approached foot of mountain

We went up the left grass slope and angled right

Looking over the praire

High enough to see into Canada/Coutts area

First flowers of 2018

The grass hill we climbed was pretty steep

We weren't alone

Checking out the big pine cones

The start of the big loose rock section

Resting in the shade

Scrambling up the rock section

This looked more like out hiking in the Rockies

There was a myriad of different game trail paths to the top

More game using their trails

Parker getting weary

Almost to the top, you can see the road we started at just left of center of this picture it is an upside down T intersection

We could see the brief outline of the snow capped Rockies in the distance but the haze in the pictures make it too hard to see

At the summit, notice the rocky terrain turned to grass on top

Signing the register.  This was the best Cairn I've ever seen with the best kept register too

Summit Photo

Cairn with Gold Butte on right in back ground and Mt. Brown on far left and Mt. Royal just right of Mt. Brown

Last view of the summit and the view from the top

Back on the rocks going down.  There were lots of paths to choose from to descend

We needed our poles as to not roll any ankles

Almost on flat ground again

Picture taken from the South east looking at the east side of West Butte.  Much steeper and rockier on this side

Little tag along I found on myself once we got home.  I hate the ticks of early season hiking!

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