Forested Summit

We did this summit as a winter snowmobile trip with Cooper Mtn. and Fox Peak.

See full report here:

http://www.pnwsota.org/blog/wu7h/2022-march-04/cooper-mountain-wa-feb-2022

I read Tim N7KOM's summit report from last week and decided to get while the getting was good.  Things were still pretty much as he described from the previous weekend.  The 2 trees were still blocking the road.  The good thing about that is that there is a wide spot in the road just around the previous corner to park.  There was only one other wide spot after that to park before the gate and nowhere to turn around. 

Treefall has been cleared! 

When I did this activation there was treefall at 45.64442, -123.54488. This added approx. 1.5-2mile-ish round trip to the hike. 

Wickiup Mountain is a summit on the edge of Astoria's Bear Creek Watershed, from which they draw their water, as well as an active radio site. As such, access from the south is gated, and road access from the north stops just shy of the summit. What followed is one of the thickest, roughest bushwhacks, mile for mile, of my SOTA career, but it was nice to tick this one off the list. If you route find a little better than I do, you might have a better time, and if you hit it earlier in the year, the die-back of the brush might benefit you.

Buck is pretty much a drive up summit if you have the right vehicle. It is one I pretty much just do because I am near and its 6 points, nothing hugely spectacular. Maybe nice if looking to do a shaded one during the summer. There are 2 peaks to the summit that are both in the activation zone. I have always gone to the one the SOTA marker is on but the other I think may offer view? I'll have to remember that for next year.

Treed area, pretty flat, plenty of area to operate.

Lake mountain has been on my list for quite a while but for some reason I had the impression it was going to be much harder.  I was waiting to do it with a partner for safety reasons but it ended up being a great day of just me and Maggie. It is a steep mountain but most of it is either trailed or open meadow until you get towards the very top. I made the mistake of going straight up not looking at my GPS satellite images and got very tangled up in the manzanita and buck brush. This is definitely not Maggie's favorite way to hike, sometimes refusing.

W7O/SC-214 was a nice little mountain that I did after Holcomb Peak. Basically you drive past Holcomb peak a bit SE and it's pretty self explanatory of where to go. You'll take a small spur road and depends on your vehicle how close you can get. You can park in some large pullouts just a little ways up the road or jeep it another 1/4mi or so. Depends on how much pinstriping you're looking for, it gets narrow with sharp manzanita and no easy turnaround. 

Snow was coming soon so I really wanted to get out and try and get a few new mountains in before winter came. A couple on my list were Holcomb peak and a no name summit right next to it, SC-214. I put these on hold before because they are a drive to something that I've never been to and have no info on, however with winter bonus and no snow yet, it made the trip worth the risk. My 1st summit was Holcolmb Peak which looked like it had the possibility of being a drive up if timber corp allowed, but much of the mountain and surrounding area had no trespassing signs.

I completed the first-ever activation of Goat Mountain (not to be confused with Goat Peak, W7W/OK-107 or other Goat Mountains in W7W) today. The summit is a communications site, so in the summer it's likely possible to drive all the way up. There were no closed gates or signs that would indicate that public access is limited, though the last stretch of road is in bad condition with several trees blocking it.

On a recent Sunday, I drove up CG-2020 from Stevenson to the saddle where CG-2025 and CG-2026 split off (around 45.717500, -121.980944) and parked on the side of the road. From there I walked down the eastern branch of the roads that meet there towards Greenleaf Peak.  The other road that goes southeast heads towards the same direction but it seems to go down hill so I chose the other side of the ridge.