2018-01-13 Laguna Benchmark, W6/SD-009

Today’s expedition took me to Laguna Benchmark (W6/SD-009 - Laguna Benchmark).  It was a beautiful day to be out hiking and I had spent a lot of time planning.  Michael West, a friend of mine (no, not the “Burn Notice” Michael), joined me as we are both trying to get ready for a Grand Canyon hike. 

As soon at Mike got to the house, we loaded up the dogs, including his dog, Chula.  Chula absolutely hates a ride in the car.  If we walk up to the car after a hike or at the house, the dog runs the other way because she knows what’s coming.  It’s probably the permanent mental damage done during the first car ride the dog took, a long, hot drive that included endless barfing.  Ummm. Let’s move on, shall we. 

I had planned the trip trying to figure out what to expect and even had a bit of help from Brad Butler (W5BJB) to figure out a route up the mountain.  I noticed he was the first, and only person to log this SOTA location so I looked him up and ask him what route he took.  He sent me some pictures and a screenshot of his route from his phone.  I overlayed this on alltrails.com as best I could to just understand how he did it and I printed out his track, some charts from alltrails and some Google sat photos.  Brad had followed a trail / road and mentioned that his kids went with him, so I figured Mike and I should be able to do this.

I did my standard SOTA loadout with an additional piece of tech, a Yaesu FT-2DR HT.   I picked this for several reasons.  One, my wife didn’t like me hiking the backcountry alone.  If I keeled over, she wanted to be able to at-least retrieve the dog.  Because it has built in GPS and APRS (Automatic Packet Reporting System, “SMS for Hams”), it can squak my position every 5 minutes as long as it can reach a station and anyone can see me on a google map like site (just search N1CLC-7 HERE).  This is much cheaper than something like SPOT, where you have to pay $200/year after you buy the radio.  The GPS gives me a backup in case my phone dies, breaks, etc. so that I can at-least get back to the car (I mark the car’s position before I leave).  APRS capability allows me to send a SMS message  to anyones phone (a lot of times I don’t have cell service) and it allows me to “self spot” on the SOTA web page which I’ll talk about later.  APRS location squak isn’t as reliable as a SPOT satellite system but it’s more flexible for me.

If you ever consider hiking with me, you might want to know that I’m not the best navigator.  I have started bringing paper maps, I prep, and I have live TOPO maps on my phone but none of this prevents a goofup.  (BTW, As a pilot, I never got lost as my instructor drilled into me the multiple ways of tracking exactly where I was at)  During my planning the night before, I put in the cross streets near the ingress point (dirt roads at our destination) into Google Maps on my phone to give me an idea of how long it would take to get there and it gave me good situational awareness as we approached the turnoff on Sunset highway.  I knew that I had to drive about 2 more miles down the road from that intersection for the trailhead, but it was a clean way to get me started and Google had those two dirt roads in their database.

Mike and I had a nice drive up.  It was a bit windy in spots and I was wondering how difficult the antenna setup was going to be in the winds.  We chatted away and Google helped alerted us to the turn-off on Desert View Road as we approached.  The road was a bit rougher than last week and it had some good single track sections around boulders & washed out areas.  It had rained earlier in the week and there were still some good water-filled mudholes to drive through.  Arriving at the designated Google map location, we saw two other vehicles at a trailhead and Mike and I went into park the car mode and uploaded the dogs and gear.

We got the charts out, I marked the car’s position on the radio and started recording on alltrails.com map app.  Because I hadn’t yet learned to create a custom map on alltrails.com (I now know how to do that), we used the paper charts to get our bearings and set off.

It was pretty and I enjoyed the scenery much better than the rock piles we have around here in San Diego.  The elevation was around 5,000 feet and there were a lot of oak and pine.  The wind blew through the trees and the dogs were excited to get going.  We went along a single-track trail and then, looking at the charts, figured out where to turn off onto the next trail.  We saw boot tracks and figured we were following some other folks that arrived earlier. There was a lot of stopping and consulting the charts and things just weren’t lining up.  What we were experiencing and seeing didn’t quite match the topo charts we had but it was close.  I pulled out my cell and it just didn’t look right and I had difficulty locating the peak we were headed for (I chalked that up to poor resolution) and we soldiered on. 

After about 1.6 miles, we ran into the people that we parked by.  They mentioned that they had to turn around because they had run into private property and the owner wasn’t too inviting.  We decided to walk on a bit further and see if the hiking path or road that we were looking for that would take us to the mountaintop would show up before the private property.  Leading up to this point, I was a bit mystified as to why I didn’t see the peaks on the GPS near our position.  Was I disoriented?  We went on about another .1 mile and checked the chart on the phone (alltrails shows your position on the topo map).  BINGO!!! I see the mountain top we needed to go to instantly on the map, recognizable by its shape and sort-of double peak.  It was directly between our position and some roads on the other side that I instantly recognize from my planning.... SHIT!!!, I realize instantly I had  made a huge mistake....  Although we might be able to summit from this side of the mountain, possible trails or roads was a complete unknown.

Go back to the top where I explained my planning and using Google Maps to get us CLOSE to the LZ / ingress point.  Remember, I said that I knew I had to drive 2 more miles after the waypoint that I used in Google for the car ride over?  Now move to the next section where I wrote about arriving at the waypoint and parking.  When Mike and, chatting the whole time, saw the parked cars, the trailhead, etc, the fact that I was suppose to keep driving completely evaporated from my brain.  This goof was completely on me.  The one thing that helped me realize this was the amount of time I spent memorizing the charts the days before we left.  We headed back to the car, me fully embarrassed about the screwup but delighted that we had a nice hike anyway.  The track of this hike is located HERE.  (See if you can spot my mistake.)

Mike and I agreed that it was still a nice hike and it was good to get out of San Diego and not be climbing through chaparral and rocks, but rather in the pines.  We were talking about coming back on Sunday and completing the mission, but hitting the correct ingress point.  We got back to the car, watered the dogs and then had to catch Chula to get her in the car.  We decided to drive down to the ingress point as a sort of recon.

The hike we just finished was only 3.6 miles and low on the difficulty level.  We got to the ingress point and it exactly matched pictures that I got from Brad.  We weren’t that tired from the hike and we still had most of the day.  The hike looked like it was between 3 to 4 miles in mild terrain so we amended our plans and saddled up.

We took a turn to the left where an obvious road went that matched close Brads track.  As you can see from our track, we lost the road for a bit, bushwhacked a tad and then found it.  It was pretty easy hiking and the road was easy to follow.  It had been quite some time since the road was used but we could easily pick it out.  Chula had no problem following it.  We could see what looked like a trail, a big scar up the mountain, with antennas at the top (something I knew was there from my recon).  I figured there was a road or trail up to the station for maintenance at a minimum.

When we got to the final ascent, it was a road for maybe a four wheeler, it was a high difficulty incline, 45 deg at some points.  I was really glad to have the hiking poles given the 30+ lbs of stuff on my back.  This would be good training for our hike into Grand Canyon.  The view from the top was awesome.  You could see the land to the west to the Ocean, the desert to the east.  Setup was easy, The Salton Sea was clearly visible.  

We were sheltered more or less from the wind and I setup my dipole antenna (sorry no pics), and tried something that I learned from Jerry (KG6HQD) who documents his SOTA expeditions on Youtube, I self-spotted.  Let me explain. 

I actually heard Jerry explaining to someone else on the radio that he had just finished a summit and doing more and to look up his videos on Youtube.  I wanted to learn more and see how others do this geeky activity.  What I learned is that you can “self spot” on the SOTA website from the mountain peak and improve the number of contacts you get as well as help “SOTA chasers” get points.  SOTA has “activators” are people like me who get points for activating a designated mountain top.  “Chasers” are people that make contacts with activators when they are on the mountain and get points.  Activators, like me, post an “Alert” on a website logging what peak they will be activating, the date and time, and the frequency(s) they will be using.   Predicting when I will summit and be on the air and what frequency will be open at the time I get there is almost impossible for me.  I could pad the time to ensure I am up and running but then it adds a lot more time to the packed weekend schedule. I’m a complete failure on the frequency guessing and nobody can really do a good job at this if there is a big contest going on that weekend.  

SOTA chasers can “spot” you and post a “spot” if they find you, helping other chasers get points.   What Jerry taught me is that I can post a “spot” to the website myself once I’m setup and running.  I spot myself using my phone via the web or a app (sotagoat)  if I have internet access.  Normally there is good coverage from mountain tops around large cities but I can also do it via an APRS message to SOTA.

So I use my new knowledge to post a “spot” to the SOTA site from an app on my phone.  Within 30 seconds I had people calling me and I created an epic “pileup” (pileup is when you have a huge number of people trying to contact someone on the radio).  I had my required 4 contacts within about 5 minutes.  In the past, this could take over an hour in bad atmospheric conditions.  I couldn’t just pack up and leave after I had my 4.  Remember, there is a ying/yang in life, I need chasers, and the chasers need me.  I needed to stay on and try to get a “QSO” with all of the guys and gals calling me so that they could log the mountain and get their 6 points (the most is 10 points for high mountains).  I spent another 30 minutes answering calls and having a quick chat with people from Arizona, London Ontario Canada, Vermont and Florida.  Pretty cool.  In 30 minutes, I racked up 16 contacts, which is big for me.  There were more in line, some gave up and the band conditions changed and I couldn’t make out the last couple.  Also, I think I got my first SOTA to SOTA contact (someone else on a mountain top doing what I was doing).  I think it was K7ATN but I can’t figure out what mountain he was on.  When I do, I’ll update this entry.

Our descent from the major steep part took 1/4 the time, and we found a much better route on the way back, that was shorter and quite a bit easier road to follow.   The gate was about 100 yds from the car and Chula just stopped, then she ran buy us  and started trotting down the road with no intention of coming back.  Mike eventually rounded her up and we headed to Descanso to Veronica’s Kitchen, a great little Mexican food restaurant.  The people there are always nice and it’s completely off the beaten path.  Mmmmm, food and a beer, just what Mike and I needed.  The track of this hike is located HERE (notice that my phone initially corrected the name and made the URL “latina” instead of “Laguna”).

We put in 8.3 miles of hiking, got in better shape, and I check another mountain off the list.  I learned a lesson, how to draw a custom map (which would have eliminated the first hike), and I think I’ll stuff some dry socks and a shirt into my pack just in case.

Contacts

Time UTC	Callsign	Band	Mode	Notes
21:08	K7ATN	14MHz	SSB	SOTA to SOTA?
21:09	W7NC	14MHz	SSB	Spokan WA
21:10	N4EX	14MHz	SSB	RALEIGH, NC
21:11	N1GB	14MHz	SSB	Guildhall, VT
21:12	W4/LZ3AW	14MHz	SSB	Dunnellon, FL
21:13	K0NO	14MHz	SSB	Council Bluffs, IA
21:14	NW7E	14MHz	SSB	Bend, OR
21:15	K9IR	14MHz	SSB	Hoffman Estates, IL
21:16	VA3ZTZ	14MHz	SSB	LONDON, ON
21:17	KD0MQO	14MHz	SSB	BLUE SPRINGS, MO
21:18	AB4PP	14MHz	SSB	Four Oaks, NC
21:19	KD1CT	14MHz	SSB	BARNSTEAD, NH
21:20	KX0R	14MHz	SSB	BOULDER, CO
21:21	WA2USA	14MHz	SSB	NEWBURGH, IN
21:22	N0EMU	14MHz	SSB	Calhan, CO
21:23	NS7P	14MHz	SSB	ELMIRA, OR
21:24	NE4TN	14MHz	SSB	Mt. Carmel, TN
21:25	WW7D	14MHz	SSB	REDMOND, WA
21:26	KC0PBK	14MHz	SSB	DES MOINES, IA
21:27	KD9APD	14MHz	SSB	Morris, IL
21:28	NQ7R	14MHz	SSB	Casa Grande, AZ
21:29	K7RG	14MHz	SSB	Coos Bay, OR
21:30	WD4CFN	14MHz	SSB	NASHVILLE, TN
21:31	K2EDW	14MHz	SSB	Medina, NY
21:32	N0CM	14MHz	SSB	WICHITA, KS
21:33	KA4ZDR	14MHz	SSB	COLUMBIA, TN

Loadout today:

●     MFJ-1910 Telescoping Mast

●     Packtenna

●     Yaesu FT-891D HF Radio at 100 watts

●     Yaesu FT-2DR HT

●     Yaesu FT-70D HT.

●     Slim Jim dual band antenna for my FT.

●     DDT Ops Anti-Venom field pack with food

●     3 L of water

●     SOTA Dog

●     iPhone with and MotionX GPS

●     Hiking pole

REFERENCE

●      My Typical SOTA Loadout

●      For more info on SOTA, rules, etc, go to the homepage HERE.

●      Ham Terminology
●      SOTA Specific Links

73s,

-- Chris Claborne, N1CLC