*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

June 15, 2019

Spread Eagle Mountain Castle Wilderness June 12, 2019

Today began the summer of Wednesday hiking! Spread Eagle is the last summit I had left in the South Castle Area.  We decided to use bikes and so I got out the trusty CCM Falcon.  I have had this bike for about 30 years, it may not look like much but it gets the job done.  Anyways the way up was pretty simple, we followed a dried out creek bed and then a scree slope up to the saddle ridge.  It was a nice calm beautiful day.  Once we reached the Summit we would have stayed longer but the bugs on the top were annoying (the one disadvantage of a windless day).  We had great views of most of the notable peaks in Waterton, Glacier and Crowsnest.  All in all a great day, if taking this route the bikes are a must and the way out was much easier on bikes than on the way in.

Spread Eagle from the prairies, this mountain is named Spread Eagle because it looks like an eagle with is wings open facing the prairie.  

View from where we started biking

The creek bed we came up

The summit in the middle we went right up the scree slope

Just before we reached the ridge we had this great view of this nice little area just below the West summit high point on the ridge

Cool little pillar to stand on, Mt. Glendowan on the left of picture

Summit Photo

On the top looking south to Waterton

Looking down the spine of the ridge towards Spionkop Ridge

Looking down on the Yarrow Creek Valley South of Spread Eagle

Snow pack covered with dirt, kind of looks cool
Track of Hike

Summit Photo Sphere

Summit Video
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