*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 14, 2018

Spionkop Ridge South Castle July 5, 2018

Well the fire I had was Monday and I had plans to leave Wednesday for a 3 night back packing trip with my scout group.  Well the fire changed my plans, but I thought I should at least go up the one day Thursday and hike with the boys (that was a good decision).  So I took my oldest boy and we biked in the first 5 km like we did on Drywood, except this time we hiked to Blue lake and met up with the boys.  As a side note there is ok cell phone service at Blue lake.  We then took the cut line from the trail up to a pass as if we were going to hike Loaf and ridge walked all the way over to Spionkop Ridge.  It was a pretty traverse and we were able to see down 3 of the 5 finger valleys of the South Castle.  The scramble up to Spionkop was pretty good and was most likely the first scramble some of these boys had ever done.  The views up on Spionkop were great.  We had thought about going to Newman, but I was pretty tuckered and knew I had a long way to go to get out.  In all the total distance covered for the day was over 30km.  We returned to the lake and relaxed for a moment and put our feet in the lake.  Then my son and I hiked/biked back to our vehicle.

On our way up, we found where the boys had ditched their bikes the day before

Great waterfall on the way up

Bear tracks and they were fresh

Heading up the cutline

Looking over into the castle wilderness

Looking back  at Victoria Ridge in the middle

Looking down the 2nd finger

Neat little cliff on the way up Spionkop

Scrambling up Spionkop

Traversing the sketchy ridge over to the summit 

Looking down the connecting ridge to Spread Eagle Mountain

Awesome cliff below Spionkop Ridge summit

Summit Panorama




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