Winter Adventures in Joshua Tree National Park, California. On a recent trip to California to visit family, we took some time to visit Joshua Tree National Park, and Activate a couple SOTA peaks. We made the town of Twenty Nine Palms our base, "roughing it" in the relatively new Holiday Inn Express facility, and making day excursions on February 1 & 2. This is report 2 of 2, detailing Activation of an unnamed peak, Point 5540.
Winter Adventures in Joshua Tree National Park, California. On a recent trip to California to visit family, we took some time to visit Joshua Tree National Park, and Activate a couple SOTA peaks. We made the town of Twenty Nine Palms our base, "roughing it" in the relatively new Holiday Inn Express facility, and making day excursions on February 1 & 2. This is report 1 of 2, detailing Activation of Ryan Mountain.
A return trip to Table Mountain, this time for a "winter" Activation. This SOTA Summit has a ski area at the peak of the mountain, Mountain High North, with the ski runs going downhill (north) from the summit. The ski area is part of the Mountain High complex of ski areas, near Wrightwood, California. Therefore, there are excellent roads leading to Wrightwood, and beyond to the ski areas, including Mountain High North. On this sunny winter day, a Monday, this particular part of the Mountain High ski complex was closed. This was one of the reasons we chose a weekday for the Activation. Nobody there! We had the entire place to ourselves.
A cold, windy & snowy winter activation of Amabilis Mountain, 4,580 feet, located east of Snoqualmie Pass, Washington, was undertaken by me and my SOTA Buddy - Tim, KG7EJT. The forecast was for a substantial change from the sunny but cold weather this area had been enjoying the previous week. The TH is easy to reach, most of the time, being right at Exit 63, Highway I-90. The route we took followed the XC Ski groomed logging road leading from the Lodge Creek / Swamp Creek Basin to the summit area of Amabilis. The route was 11.18 miles RT, gaining approximately 2,050 feet elevation.
UPDATE January 2021 - Green Mtn has been posted PERMIT REQUIRED FOR ALL ACCESS by Weyerhauser.
Here's a 1.1 mile one-way hike with 800 feet of gain just a ways south of Bend, Oregon. It's got some great views and a nice summit with a bit of lookout history.
Monday, November 23, 2015, KC8WF and I (KF7URE) hiked to Teapot Dome W7I/SR-163 to do SOTA. Teapot Dome is a desert peak at 4,712 feet high, north of Mountain Home, Idaho.
Nicolai Mountain is a drive-up summit west of Clatskanie in northwest Oregon. The gravel road is driveable the ENTIRE WAY in any passenger car (totally Priusable). So if your GPS is having you turn up a 4WD track you are going the wrong way. The views from the 3,028 foot summit can be awesome - the drive has views of the Columbia Estuary that's fantastic. Note that there can be of OHV activity on these roads and trails, especially on weekends.
One of the last beautiful Fall weekends of 2015, yielded an activation of Thorp Mountain and Hard Knox Mountain together with my "SOTA Buddy", KG7EJT and Dexter the SOTA Dog. The weather was superb, a successful dual activation, including a First Activation of Hard Knox, followed by a great dinner and local "Brew" in Roslyn, Washington, made for one of the more memorable SOTA outings in my career! The views, and great access, make this a highly recommended double SOTA objective. This report describes Hard Knox Mountain Activation. Thorp Mountain Activation is listed under a separate report.
One of the last beautiful Fall weekends of 2015, yielded an activation of Thorp Mountain and Hard Knox Mountain together with my "SOTA Buddy", KG7EJT and Dexter the SOTA Dog. The weather was superb, a successful dual activation, including a First Activation of Hard Knox, followed by a great dinner and local "Brew" in Roslyn, Washington, made for one of the more memorable SOTA outings in my career! The views, and great access, make this a highly recommended double SOTA objective. This report describes Thorp Mountain Activation. Hard Knox is listed under a separate report.