Treacherous Trail

My wife and I set out on 8 May 2016 to activate Mount June, W7O/WV-042. This is a moderately difficult hike to the top of a 4620’ summit.

First Activation of Mount Heinen.

Full Report coming soon.

First SOTA Activation of Lookout Mountain, a smallish, somewhat obscure SOTA peak, above the town of Cle Elum.  Lookout Mountain is 3,465 Feet in elevation (1,056 Meters), which makes it feasible even in winter, when the high country is still buried in snow.  This Lookout Mountain is NOT to be confused with Lookout Mountain (W7W/CW-037).  This joint Activation, together with my SOTA Buddy, Tim, KG7EJT, took quite a bit of reserach and planning to achieve.  The easy / old way to reach the summit was from the South.  However, over the last decade or so, the entire southern exposure of Lookout Mountain has changed hands in ownership, and is now a "gated" community of large land parcels & homes. This necessitated a cross country brush beat to summit from the North.

Middle Sister is in the Three Sisters Wilderness of Central Oregon and is a committed alpine climb - it cannot be considered a hike as there is not a 'trail' to the top.

Broken Top is in the Three Sisters Wilderness of Central Oregon.

On this Saturday of the NA SOTA Weekend, at about 10:45am, our party of four set out from Sunrise on Mt. Rainier to walk the Mt. Fremont Lookout trail.  The Lookout promises spectacular northward views of the Grand Park meadows, and the entire trail is hugely scenic.  More to the point, about ½ mile before the Lookout, the trail passes a few hundred feet below the summit of Mt. Fremont, and that was, of course, the real destination for the hams in the group:  myself and Al N7OMS.

We spent the weekend climbing and camping at the nearby Spring Mountain climbing area.  This is a great climbing area with nearby camping.  Just a short distance away is Sugarloaf Mountain.  It looked much forested and the road/trail access was questionable, but a previous activation said it was doable.

Summit 7905 W7I/BC-059 was the second stop on K7MK's and K7ZO's Idaho Triple Play day. (Along with Pilot Peak W7I/BC-056 and Sunset Mountain W7I/BC-062. See these other activation reports for the whole story of the day. Where appropriate, some text is repeated in each report to make each one a standalone complete story.)

K7MK and I headed out late in the morning on July 24 to accomplish a double -- Boise Peak - W7I/BC-079 and this summit 6624 - W7I/BC-077. We were thwarted on our access to Boise Peak by an impassible section of road. See a separate activation report on Boise Peak for that story. This wasted well over an hour of time as we drove up the road to Boise Peak and then came back down again. If there was one silver lining is this cloud is that during the round trip we noticed that K7MK's APRS system was not working.

An Activation...yes.  A great trip...undoubtedly!  However no points to show for the effort, as I only managed to eke out 3 + contacts on 40M ssb... Yet I do not consider it a failure.  I will return again, and give it another try.  Round trip travel was 13.1 miles, with something over 4,000 feet gain, including some ups and downs along the very long summit ridge.  Highlights included portions of the Wonderland Trail of Mount Rainier Park, a few creek crossings of the wildly flowing Fryingpan Creek, replete with slippery boulder hopping leaps, and being able to spend time with my son, KC7SQD, who was up visiting from LA LA Land.