Stack Rock has become more accessible over the last few years due to private land being converted to public access. A private donation made it possible for the Land Trust of the Treasure Valley to purchase private land around and on the way to Stack Rock. More information here at this LINK. The trail is widely used by hikers, mountain bikers and is now used by those that have drank the SOTA Kool-Aid!
To get started on the first ever activation of Stack Rock, my wife, our Golden Retriever and I drove across town to pick up K7ZO at the bottom of Bogus Basin Rd. From here we headed ~ 13 miles up Bogus Basin Rd to the trailhead for Stack Rock. There is a parking pull-out on the left hand side of the road a couple miles before you get to the Bogus Basin Ski Resort. From here we set off for the reasonable 3.9 mile hike out to Stack Rock. The trail is in great shape and is well marked now with signs put up by the Land Trust:
(Click image for larger view)
The trail starts off as a steep-downhill winding single track, but shortly turns into a gentle double track. It is an enjoyable undulating trail that is shaded and has great views of Shafer Butte.
K7MK, Rochelle and Maggie (Golden Retriever) with Stack Rock in the background. (Click image for larger view)
K7MK + K7ZO with Stack Rock in the background. Note the activation took place up on the right hand shoulder of Stack Rock. (Click image for larger view)
Once we arrived at Stack Rock we had 2 choices for activation.
The first choice was for me to put on my climbing shoes and solo up to near the top with the SOTA gear. The Class 4+ scramble up to the top is tested by a lot of hikers. If they make it near the summit, they are presented with a pretty scary downclimb. It's the standard "easier to get up than down" scenario.
South side scramble route. It's more exposed than it looks. (Click image for a larger view)
The second choice was to find a spot on either side of Stack Rock that was within the 80 ft activation zone required by the Idaho rules. From topo maps and by eyeing it up in person, it appeared the south side was greater than 80ft from the top. This is the side you will first approach from the trail and is the side where the scramble to the top is. We really wanted to find a spot where future non-climber activators could access and re-activate the summit, so we circumnavigated the summit and found that the north shoulder was higher. This was confirmed on the topo maps and a reading of 5815 ft on my GPS matched what Google Earth said it should be over there. 5815 was exactly 80ft shy of the summit. To further verify the activation zone I held up my 30ft pole to estimate the distance to the top. It appeared that 2 pole lengths and another 20ft was just about right to reach the summit. So we were pretty confident this shoulder was within the activation zone. However, to give us a little leeway, I set the KX3 up ontop of a 8ft boulder to put me firmly in the activation zone.
After a quick SOTAGOAT spot on 14.347 that frequency immediately became unavailable for me, so I reconvened on 14.282 with another SOTAGOAT spot. It wasn't very long before the welcome voice of W0ERI was heard and Martha was in the log for the first SOTA QSO from Stack Rock. Another 7 followed on 20m and then a single QSO on 17m. I tried for a while on 40m, but no contacts were made. It seemed like everyone in the SOTA world was trying to work W7IMC over on the KH6 summit when I was parked on top of that boulder.
In the end, for a climber or confident scrambler, the activation may be easier/faster by climbing half way up the scramble route and setting up your rig. However, the north side is available for activators that don't want to test their downclimbing skills. We followed a faint trail around the east side of the rock to get to the shoulder on the north side.
Gear: KX3 @ 10W, Zippy 4S2P LiFePO4 battery, 30ft Sotabeams.com pole, kx3helper.com endfed wire.
Thanks for the Q's!
73, K7MK
More pictures:
