This is not the "Pilot Butte" that you think you will activate in an easy afternoon within the City Limits of Bend. Its prominance is only 468 feet for a 4138 foot elevation. The Pilot Butte you want to activate is the 5780 foot high 4 point summit with 1400 feet of prominance that's about 20 miles east of Prineville.
5.9 miles, +3,100 ft, -300 ft
Mostly on-trail, Some Off-Trail
The trailhead (Glacier National Park – Lubec Lake / Firebrand Pass Trailhead) is easy to get to, but also easy to miss. The trailhead parking is on a short (500-foot) loop turnoff from Highway-2 that is squeezed between the highway and the railroad tracks. The trailhead is 6.25 miles from the main intersection in East Glacier, and 8.6 miles from the John F. Stevens monument at the summit of Marias Pass.
After abortive failures earlier in the day due to lack of access I finally completed an activation on this awesome summit on a beautiful day.
Access to the summit is via gated logging roads with recreation use permitted signs and no motor vehicles allowed.
Parking is directly off Highway 47 south of Clatskanie at position: 46.041460, -123.248066
There is ample parking for multiple vehicles as seen below:
If you use the 'SMS to SOTA' spotting gateway to get spotted on a summit, please note that the US number has changed as of Jan 2019! The new number is: 1-424-373-SOTA ( 1-424-373-7682 ).
If you don't currently use the SMS SOTA spotting gateway... well, you should! It just might save your activation some day.
How does one go about using this magical gateway, you ask?
First step is to register by sending an email to Andy MM0FMF (mm0fmf_sota AT intermoose.com). Subject of the email should be: "Please sign me up for your SMS to SOTA spot gateway".
West Tiger Mountain is one of W7W's most frequently activated summits. It is part of the 'Issaquah Alps', and being close to Seattle is a very popular day hiking area. Arrive early to get parking near the trailhead, and don't forget your Discover Pass!
There are a series of summits called 'West Tiger' - the one we are interested in for SOTA is known as West Tiger 1.
I completed the first activation on Doppler Shift on 04MAR2019. The hike is roughly 2 miles from a logging gate. In my case this gate was open however as with all these gates they can be closed and locked at any time so pass them at your own risk. I was able to drive about 3/4 of the way up before finding a 'Unauthorized Motor Vehicle Access Prohibited' sign. At that point I found a spot to park and hiked the rest of the way to the activation point.
Here's a nice 3 mile snowshoe or cross-country ski in the winter. OR...you may be able to drive within about a half mile in the summer. For a good ski experience, you might want to have at least 3 to 5 feet of snow on the ground - see the depth measure in the first photo below.
Winter activation of a "standard Idaho 2-pointer" (read: barely achievable especially during winter!). I took advantage of a newly activated holiday at work (President's day) to activate the closest summit to Boise. I went up the standard "hiking" summer route. The round trip on foot is 11.5 miles and 3000 ft vertical. The summer "4x4 drive-up" route is gated closed Nov-April and is currently under a bunch of snow.
The activation zone for Cooper Mountain is a (very) short hike above the dog park at Winkelman Park, 10139 SW 175th Ave, Beaverton, Oregon. There is no AZ access from Cooper Mountain Nature Park to the west and the summit proper is posted "No Trespassing."
Hello SOTA Fans! You may have noticed that the PNWSOTA site was off the air for a number of weeks recently. The old server that hosted the site for the past 7 years died. Luckily KK7DS had been keeping backups and we were able to restore the site on a new server. Hooray!!
Shout out to NH6Z for hosting the site for many years. Also a HUGE thanks to Dan KK7DS - without his expertise (and backups!), PNWSOTA would no longer exist and 7 years worth of awesome trip reports and other SOTA data would now be lost!