*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

September 24, 2018

South Sister Attempt September 22, 2018 Three Sister Wilderness Oregon

Well this was going to be a good one.  I was going to fly down to Oregon and visit my brother and go hiking with him.  This was going to be my 5th 10,000ft plus summit for the year and it was going to be my first hike through the night and summit at sunrise hike.  Well the weather changed everything.  We got to the trail head at about 12:00am on the 22nd and we were on the trail by about 12:30 am.  The weather forecast was to be nice and there was almost a full moon and as we started our hiking there was hardly a breeze.  The sky was clear and we had a great first couple hours of hiking.  Then as we got higher we noticed some clouds rolling in and we thought nothing of it.  Eventually we got to about 7800 feet and the wind really picked up so we decided we were probably going at a pace too fast that we would reach the summit before sunrise.  So we stopped and rested for probably around an hour.  Then we noticed the cloud cover was really coming in and so we decided that it would be better to descent a little and get to a warmer more sheltered area and hunker down for a bit.  We did and then at about 6 am when we woke up we noticed the cloud cover was even lower and the wind was about the same.  So we decided we better just give it a shot.  So we climbed and passed a few people coming down so said it was too sketchy and so they turned back.  We did notice that as we climbed higher the elements worsened.  At first it was just windy and foggy but by the time we turned around it was very windy, rainy, cold and foggy.  We were all wet and cold and the next 1300 feet to the summit was totally exposed to the elements and so we packed it in.  We got to about 8900 feet and as we descended we noticed many other parties attempting the mountain and we told them it was nasty.  Anyways since I didn't want to have come all this way and not summit I noticed on my map that there was a little named summit on the way down we could bag.  It was called Devil's Hill and so we summited that to at least have something to show for.  It was just over 7000 ft.  The worst part of the day was once we came down just around noon time we noticed the weather started to turn and even worse as we drove back and passed through Bend Oregon we could see the mountain and it was still in the clouds but the weather looked much better and the rest of the day was sunny and nice.  We picked like the worst possible moment to do this hike.  But oh well better luck next time!

Beginning of our hike

Moon bright as can be as we started

This is what it looked like at about 6am

The fog got thicker as we climbed

This was one of the best trails I've ever used and there were lots of markers along the way

Weather getting worse

This was a few minutes before we turned back

On descent we figured we had to get a picture with a sign.  We were very wet at this point and cold.

View down on a lake called Moraine Lake....not quite as pretty as Banff's Moraine Lake

On our way up to Devil's Hill through a really neat forest that had no bush to fight through

Not much of a summit but I'll call it one!

Looking down Devil's Hill into the fog

Descending into the fog from Devil's Hill

End of hike

The view just after Bend, South Sister in the left of middle and middle and north Sister on the right of middle.

Track of Hike





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