K7EEX's blog

This private timber land is owned by Stimson Lumber Company.  Stimson allows very limited access to their land with many, many stipulations.  The area access from Olson Road off of Highway 26 is not open to the public before 4:00 PM on weekdays due to logging and road building actitivies.  Non-motorized access is allowed on weekends.  The gates can be closed at any time and are usually only open to the public during hunting season on posted days.  In other words, expect the gates to be closed most of the time.

I had been eyeing this unactivated two point peak for several weeks. When we saw the weather forecast looking unusually good, the little sherpa and I made a plan to catch the summit on the weekend. A couple of days before the Saturday, she suddenly found herself torn betwingst a summit with me or hanging out with her BFF. Shortly after the sad news was delivered to me that I had come in second place in the popularity contest, Roland/K7FOP sent me an email inquiring if he could tag along. But of course he could!

The route to Gobblers Knob looked difficult on the maps. I collected paper maps and laid out several GPS tracks. I started my approach from the little town of Yamhill and within the first 10 miles had already hit my first locked gate. Then another. Then another. As the rain pelted the windshield, the thought of bailing on the adventure crossed my mind. But then the crazy-side regained control. I decided to go with intuition rather than maps.

When the plans for the weekend fell through, the sherpas jumped into action and planned something to do before telling me. Fearing that a free weekend would lead to a trudge up some hill hauling a heap of radio gear they seized on the moment to make a unified plan and then make a joint announcement. But they are compassionate souls - as they planned their day of geocaching and photography, they sought to placate the old man by finding a location with a nearby, albeit more mild, summit. And thus the great scheme was launched.

Peak 2445 - just another nondescript peak in Oregon’s Coastal Range, or is it? It turns out that this is an easy drive-up peak a little more than a half hour’s drive west of Forest Grove and should be considered a good peak for SOTA beginners.

Seeing that this is one of the closest, biggest peaks to the QTH, it was a no-brainer that we would make this an early target for our newfound SOTA fascination.  On a nice Sunday afternoon, the sudden call was made that we should load up the Jeep and make the scramble up the hill.

W7O/NC-071, listed as summit number 3058, is a part of what is more commonly referred to as Hembre Ridge.  While formally Hembre Ridge is the ridgeline that runs northeast to southwest, summit 3058 is the highest point in this massif.  I’ll leave it to others to quibble about whether this summit should be renamed.  

We had grand plans for the weekend and then saw them all melt away after a couple of received phone calls.  By Sunday afternoon, the sobering reality of a totally adventureless weekend was weighing heavily on us.  As my hope faded, Mrs.

NOTE in January 2021 - This summit has been posted PERMIT REQUIRED FOR ALL ACCESS by Weyerhauser. See photo below.

I read up on K7ATN's activation from 2015 and spent a fair amount of time looking at the maps.  It seemed like there was an easier way to the summit than the highly rutted road that he had taken.  Sure enough, there are good roads all the way to the bottom of the approach.