Blind Cabin Ridge is a 1 pointer with few activations as of this writing. Access via Barney Reservoir may be gated, so check ahead of time. Thank you to Ryan W7RMR for his write up on the PacNW SOTA facebook group.
I was trying to find a mid-week drive up summit and Blind Cabin Ridge fit the bill. In my search for the status of the gates, I found this document from Weyerhaeuser, which stated:
"Trask: The Turner Creek Mainline and Barney gate will be open for motorized access until March 31, 2021. All other areas are open for non-motorized access only."
To get to Blind Cabin Ridge, drive to Yamhill and then to Barney Reservoir via Turner Creek Road. Pavement ends just before the first gate. The dirt road to the reservoir is in good condition. There is active logging in the area, so be aware of logging truck traffic. See this: Caltopo Map
Google maps did an okay time navagating to the reservoir, but once tried to send me up a gated road. Follow the good logging road and you'll be okay. Once at the reservoir, look for the right turn at 45.4443, -123.3799. This is the unnamed road that will take you to Blind Cabin Ridge.
The road up from the reservoir is in good condition and steep. There was some snow on my drive up.
Once your out of the steeps, turn right, then stay left to make the summit turnaround. The summit is cleared and the turnaround has room for several vehicles.
There are a number of saplings to throw a line up. I raised a rollup J-Pole 10-12' feet and started calling CQ. WJ7WJ was my first contact of the day and first with my new callsign! After 10 more minutes of no contacts, I moved to 146.52 and found a whole crew of hams chewing rag. Many thanks to them for letting me interupt and make contacts. They were pretty excited to talk with a "mountaintop portable" and hear about the j-pole. They gave me "booming" signal reports all the way into Washington.
With 7 2m contacts the summit was activated and that 1point was in my pocket. Time to play HF. I dropped the ladder line and rigged up an EFHW on 20m. I spotted myself and started calling CQ. After some time I was still empty handed on HF. At this point most of the snow on the summit had melted.
I packed up, took some photos, walked around with Roscoe, and then headed down the road. All in all, beautiful day and quality drive to get up here. There are a number of nearby peaks that would be worth activating too as access allows.
I had 2 bars 4g Verizon from the summit.
