2466 (amplifier peak) wa | november 2022

Summary - 2466 (Amplifier Peak) is on Weyerhauser's Longview land northwest of Merrill Lake and is most easily accessed through a gate on Kalama River Road. The highway drive from PDX is roughly eighty minutes; to the trailhead, plan on another forty minutes or so along logging roads to the summit. The last part of the drive is through an active logging area and the road is often closed, so you may want to have a backup plan.  Don't count on two meters to make your four QSOs. Cell phone service is marginal, and APRS pings get picked up.

A Weyerhauser recreational permit (which includes a key for the gates) is required for access. The company is actively logging in the area and trucks and equipment *always* have the right-of-way. This can mean a long, scary reverse on one lane roads with few turnouts and significant exposure. Weekends are quiet and the best time for a visit. Given the confusing welter of logging roads, the company-authored map is a must.

Long Version -  2466 is part of a group of peaks that includes Bull Mountain, 3860, 3566, and 3420.  You could bag all of them on a two day visit and probably get Lakeview and Bandwidth, too. On this trip, I visited 2466 (Amplifier Peak) and 3420 (Mount Beacon).  To get there from Portland, take I-5 to exit 32 and follow Kalama River Road to the Weyerhaueser road 6600 gate. After the gate, you have another fourteen miles of logging roads to the summit. The last part of the drive to summit is through an active logging operation. The last section of road is steep, dirt rather than gravel, and may be closed; have a backup plan.  

You can also reach this area by taking I-5 exit 21, highway 503, and Rock Creek Road to a Weyerhaueser gate on 6600 but the drive from there is a bit challenging, so I leave it as an exercise for the reader.

The summit is on the edge of a clear cut and not a particularly attractive place to hang out. There are trees for hanging wires. There may be views but the clouds were at summit height, so I didn't see one.  As usual for this area, I didn't have any luck on 2M, texting with a cell phone was difficult but possible, and APRS was workable. There was a contest going, so the airwaves were filled with QRO stations doing 50 words a minute, but I still managed QSOs across five bands over the course of an hour.  Someday I will have to figure out how to do that contest thing, I guess.

This is one of those hills you do when you are in the area doing something else, unlike 3420, which is a destination summit.