On 21 June the family and I headed out to Ritzville, WA to pick up my oldest daughter, Lily. Of course you know that I cannot drive 2/3 of the way across the state of WA and not find a SOTA to do. As I was looking at the map I noticed that there was a geocache (http://www.geocaching.com/) on the top of Red Top Mountain, which normally means it is reachable. I then took a look at the Washington Trail Association page (http://www.wta.org/) and noticed that this was an easy hike and was kid friendly, more about that soon. So off we go to pick up Lily leaving at about 0930. We planned to meet at approximately 1500 and were right on schedule. As you can see this is the middle of a long day. 4 hours drive to Ritzville and then a few hours to the TH. We were at the summit at about 1845. The view was great and all the kids had a fun time. I will say that dad was a little stressed. The East side of the summit is about 200ft of drop off and there is not much room to run around. Which leads me to the personalities of the the kids at the top. Colten immediately finds the tallest rocks and wants to climb on all of them, Brookelyn is right behind him and has an obsession with looking off the edge of the cliff, Makailla is freaking about the ant that is crawling on her legs, and Lily as always is helping out with Kimber who is the typical baby and exploring, and Delma has total control and is calm while all this is happening. All the while I am working on contacts on the radio. My wife Delma is doing great watching the kids but I just cannot concentrate with the 200ft cliff near my side. Needless to say there was only 5 quick contacts and then the stress level was to high and I had to call it quits. We made our way down the hill and made it back home in Olympia just a few minutes before midnight.
http://kf7pxt.blogspot.com/2014/06/red-top-mountain-w7wcw-061-sota.html
