After attending Dan and Taylor's (KK7DS & K7TAY) seminar at SEAPAC, I was inspired to give SOTA a try.

Wanted to try out my gear so I hiked up this butte which is right behind my house. About 1000 ft straight up. No trail to speak of, just a lot of loose rock.  Set up my Buddipole and tuned it with a small analyzer. Operated 20m CW with my Elecraft K-1 and mini-paddles. Battery was an 1800mAh 12 volt model airplane Li-Po I had laying around the shop.  It wasn't until I quit that I realized I never used the auto-tuner in my K-1, so who knows how much my 5 watts was throttled down. I'll try to remember that next time.

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.

This coming Friday night (June 1, 2012) there will be a gathering of PNW SOTA people in Seaside, OR for dinner. This pre-SeaPac event will occur at 6:30pm and is open to anyone interested or participating in the SOTA program in the area. Come by to share your experiences and otherwise mingle with like-minded SOTA addicts.

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. 

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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.