Cloning 11.2.0.4 database to 12.2 ... is it a valid upgrade

We are slowing moving our databases over to 12.2 .  I need to keep the existing 11.2.0.4 database until we have successfully moved to 12.2 .  Cloning is the fastest way of moving a copy of the existing database to a new instance . I chose to use the 12.2 code tree directly instead of adding an additional 11.2.0.4 code tree onto the new server. It did work when I went from 11.2.0.3 to 11.2.0.4 --> I know  two minor versions and not two major db version differences .  It appears to work , backups and running processes have no issue. Selecting from the dba_registry shows the following :

COMP_ID        COMP_NAME                                             VERSION      STATUS       NAMESPACE      CONTROL      SCHEMA         PROCEDURE