Sunday, January 15th, 2017 was my attempt to do Mt. Spokane (formerly referred to as Jump-off-Joe). I believe my activation is the first “winter” activation of this peak. As previously reported, there are several ways to access this summit, which even include taking the chair lift in the ski area! Previous activations from other have included driving to the top, hiking, and Mountain Biking. My attempt would be on a snow shoe trail that is well travelled. The first half of the trail is a moderate or so incline and the last section is pretty steep and directly adjacent to the down hill ski area. There were many people on this route. None were wearing climber’s helmet or had an ice axe, but I think those items would be good. My head did get “wacked” at some point during the trip. ½ way up there is a picnic table area. Also at the activation point, there is a warming hut. It was open with a fire going and hot snacks were being sold…
Here is a Snowshoe Map.
Previous reports indicated challenges with RF on the 2 meter band. This concerned me so I had hoped to utilize my new KX2 to make some HF contacts. One previous activator, who also used HF, indicated to me he did not have any problems with RF, though he made a few contacts and most of his contacts were HF, so it might not have been noticeable to him…. After getting to the top I set up. Because of how much traffic there was, and the weather, I chose not to try HF (at least initially). I used my 2 meter radio with a telescopic antenna. I had my other Yaesu radio on that was monitoring 146.520, and was primarily being used for APRS. After my first call out, I detected something immediately wrong. I could hear some scratchy transmissions on my other radio, but nothing on my primary radio. I had run into this problem before on a peak in Canada. This time I was prepared. I turned on my front end attenuator and voila, I could immediately hear the person in a very clear and distinct transmission calling me. I would get a total of 5 QSO’s, the last two coming by getting my Yagi out…. Two contacts on my telescopic whip were about 60 miles out!
Thanks to chasers: W7MEM, KD7ADH, N7KIX, N7KAM, KK7SJM