Activation Reports

The morning after my arrival in Oregon, I was awake 2 hrs before dawn despite the extensive sampling of Oregon beer I’d engaged the night before. After verifying there was no way I was getting more sleep, I crept out of the house without breakfast or coffee to head toward the closest reference on my list: Bolt Mountain, a never-activated 1pt summit a few miles south. I posted a quick alert, commandeered the family truck and headed out.

Update (5/18): Private Property Alert!

I received a note from Doug W7ZV letting me know that I had crossed private property on my hike to Wagner Mountain. In fact the SUMMIT of Wagner is apparently private property, owned by Young Life's Washington Family Ranch. The river map I was using did not indicate this, and there are no private property signs in this remote area. In short, I had no way of knowing that I would be entering private property on this hike.

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 approaching from the east, 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 (starting near 45.3353, -123.559) that crosses over the summit and follow it up. The hill is accessed 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. It was then that I realized I had not remembered to bring the coax jumper. This really deflated me. All that effort, and there was to be no activation.

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:
https://youtu.be/wEc5C1NV1F0

It was a beautiful sunny day and we had the mountain to ourselves. Snow conditions were great - we were on snow the entire hike but did not need snowshoes. It was about as perfect as an early spring activation could possibly be! Compared to our last activation (Sky Mountain) this was a walk in the park.

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.

Planned on a camping trip for a few weeks to the area so I'd scouted out the summits on the map and noted routes in. Our orignal plan was to camp at and activate W7O/CE-265 - 6057 but in the weeks leading up to the trip, lots of snow had fallen in the higher elevations.