Scouted the summit while in the area. Too far into the Coast Range for 2m contacts in the valley. Might be good for S2S contacts or other bands. Summit is easy to drive to, less than a mile off Boundary Road between the Trask & Nestucca drainages, no low-profile vehicles but anything else should be fine. Can drive right to the top, which has decent views and might make a good place to camp out.

This summit is an easy driveup, though low clearance vehicles will have trouble with the last half mile or so. Even better, park at the bottom of the steep hill climbs and hike in or pick up the unused motorcycle trail that crosses over the summit and follow it up. The hill is access by Boundary road, which is accessed from the upper reaches of the Trask drainage or a variety of roads that climb up from the Nestucca.

An easily accessed summit, that's easily access from the Nestucca River byway. A bunch of different roads will lead you into the area from nearly any direction. Probably the easiest is up Fan Creek Road from the Nestucca River. It is near enough to Boudary road to access several other nearby summits along the same ridgeline.

I was in Spokane with my wife, who was presenting some research at a conference (I'm retired, she's the "breadwinner" now) and had some time to kill. I brought my KX2 along, with a QRPGuys 40m-10m UnUnTenna. This is a fairly simple antenna, with wire mated to a 9:1 unun, and takes a bnc coax jumper from the KX2. After a hike up from the parking area, I found a good place to set up, and threw a messenger line up into a tree.

I will be on a 5 day rafting trip on the John Day River in Central Oregon from April 17th - 21st with my boy scout troop. I plan to do a few SOTA activations during the trip, and also participate in 'QRP to the field' on the 21st. We are putting in at Service Creek and ending near Clarno. I will post some SOTA alerts before I leave, but the times are likely to be completely wrong!

Coming up on Saturday, April 21 2018 is a QRP and SOTA event – with Rivers as a bonus! It’s QRP to the Field, or QRP TTF, an annual party for taking your radio outdoors. The ‘theme’ for 2018 is rivers – you could think of it as “Rivers on the Air”.

A one point summit that you might want to do along with close by Cedar Butte, Triangulation Point, Blue Ridge or Peak 2300.

Myself and AC7MA set off to activate Hex Mountain (1534m, 6 Points + 3 winter bonus) this past Tuesday (20th March). Here is a short video I made at the summit:

In looking at peaks near my QTH that had not been activated yet, I noticed Long Mountain (W7O/NC-034).  There were no notes on the peak’s page warning of issues and from examing the maps, it appeared that it may be a fairly routine exercise to get to the summit which is just north of Green Mountain.