This is a well-used, highly-trafficed trail. There is plenty of parking, but you may want to get to the trailhead early as the parking lot does fill up. There are restroom facilities at the trailhead, but they may be seasonally open. The summit has a hand rail that can be used for antenna guy lines.
My Adventures in fitness and SOTA continue! This was a fun one, spur of the moment decision to do it. Hours drive to the trail head, hour up, 30 minutes operating, hour down and an hour drive home. The view from the top was really nice and there was a ledge with a really good drop off as well!
GPX and Google Earth files here.
I wanted to do an easy one on my own after my first activation with a group. This summit was one that I knew I could drive up. I hiked the last quarter mile to the actual summit and used my hand held for the activation. Had fun and Yukon and I got a bit more exercise.
My wife, Christina, and I activated W7/CC-002 on Saturday, May 19, 2012. Here is a brief account of the day.
I will not add to the directions to the trailhead found in N7UN's and other's descriptions. It took close to 40 minutes on dirt roads to go from Alsea to the trailhead. Park near the yellow gate and proceed past the gate onto the trail.
Finally stopped being only a shack sloth and decided to try to be a mountain goat for once. I went with a group of friends and took my best friend and service dog Yukon with me. It was a real blast with successful activation, Yukon and I can't wait till the next summit. We decided to start small and plan on slowly working our way up to the tougher summits.
A month and a half ago, Dan (KK7DS) and I attempted Silver Star Mountain on snowshoes from the north side. Sadly, we never made it to the summit due to strong gusts of wind that nearly blew me off the moutain :) Yesterday, we decided to approach it from the south side following the Grouse Vista Trail, a 6-mile roundtrip hike (here's a link to our GPS track). Our hope was that most of the snow would have melted since our last unsuccessful attempt.
Start elev.: 4291 ft (1308 m)
Max elev.: 4881 ft (1488 m)
Total ascent: 604 ft (184 m)
Trip odometer: 2.6mi (4.184km) Up: 1.5mi (2.414km) Down: 1.1mi (1.770km)
Total time: 7h20m Up: 1h37m Down: 36m
Video
Start elev.: 3791 ft (1155 m)
Max elev.: 6781 ft (2067 m)
Total ascent: 3096 ft (944 m)
Trip odometer: 10.6mi (17.059km) Up: 5.2mi (8.369km) Down: 5.4mi (8.690km)
Total time: 11h05m Up: 4h37m Down: 3h24m
Start elev.: 3948 ft (1203 m)
Max elev.: 4870 ft (1484 m)
Elevation gain: 1058 ft (322 m)
Trip odometer: 2.5mi (4.023km) Up: 1.3mi (2.092km) Down: 1.2mi (1.931km)
Total time: 8h42m Up: 2h38m Down: 1h32m
Video link later
