A return trip to Table Mountain, this time for a "winter" Activation. This SOTA Summit has a ski area at the peak of the mountain, Mountain High North, with the ski runs going downhill (north) from the summit. The ski area is part of the Mountain High complex of ski areas, near Wrightwood, California. Therefore, there are excellent roads leading to Wrightwood, and beyond to the ski areas, including Mountain High North. On this sunny winter day, a Monday, this particular part of the Mountain High ski complex was closed. This was one of the reasons we chose a weekday for the Activation. Nobody there! We had the entire place to ourselves.
The road was bare and dry as we rose up fron Highway 2 at Big Pines towards the parking area of Mountain High North. See: http://www.mthigh.com/. We appreciated the road conditions as our rental car was a front wheel drive Nissan Altima, which none the less did quite well in the little bit of snow driving we did in and around Wrightwood. We are accustomed to driving a 4 wheel drive vehicle, carrying chains, shovels, rubber gloves and emergency gear when driving in the mountains of Washington State during the winter. Arriving at the ski area parking lot at 9:30 AM, the air temperature was approximately 35 degrees, and the wind was out of the north at about 5 - 7 MPH. There was about 12 inches of snow on the ground, and travel was quite easy. As the route to the summit is only about 1/3 mile we did not bother with snowshoes as they were clearly not needed. Arriving very soon at the Activation Zone, we set up for 40 meter operations using my 20M + 40M Linked Dipole, set up as an "Inverted V", hung from a 25 foot high carbon fiber fishing pole for support. In an hour and 25 minutes operating time I made 24 SSB contacts, all on 40M. We set up on the lee side of the summit, out of the wind, and so conditions were quite nice for a winter activation.
Thank you so much to all my contacts and "Chasers". I worked: AA6VV; KG6OTE; K7IB; WI6S; AE6WT; KE6DLO; AA1SZ; KF6RRR; W6GEV; W7RV; K6EL; NG6R; KC5CW; KX6A; W7USA; NS7P; AE9F; F6FHZ; KK6ABZ; KK6SNB; AI6KO; KG7NXJ; K6TVT; N6DUK.
