Today I did some “chasing” rather than summiting... from a summit. I needed a hike so I thought I would put on the backpack and headed up the mountain behind my house. Jeanette and I headed out and it was 43 degrees on the trail, nippy for sure. The first objective was to check on my Geocache. Owners are expected to check their caches to ensure they are in working order. I’s a little over 1.5 miles up to the cache I think and the cache was exactly like I left it... about a year ago. The cache is called “Col des Bush Valley”, a name I came up with while watching the Tour de France from my cabin one year. The cache location overlooks Alpine and “Bush Valley” so the name fits.

I put the cache back in it’s place and I then walked over to the east side of the mountain and setup my radio, and Jeanette and Sulu headed home. I figured I’d dial up the sotawatch.org web site and find some other guys that have been spotted on a summit and see if I could help them out. After I setup, I went to heat up some water for mint tea and found a backpacking meal in the bag that I keep my JetBoil in. I heated up some water for breakfast, a Shepherd’s Pie, and some mint tea. While my breakfast was warming up, my friend Adam, K6ARK, posted a spot on a mountain in the White Mountains of California. He’s left the sierras and now working a few peaks in the White Mountains as he closes in on “SOTA Goat”, 1,000 points. Adam has taken on some really tough peaks and he definitely earned the award. I talked to him on 40M while he was on W6/WH-003, Piute Mountain. He had his 100 radio on this summit and quickly had a “pileup” wanting to talk to him. After I shutdown, and on my way home, Adam was up on another peak, W6/ND-378 - Sheep Mountain. The guy’s a beast.

After our talk I ate my piping hot breakfast. It was actually pretty darn good. I’ll get another one of those and toss it in with my JetBoil. I don’t always carry it but when I do, it’s super handy.

Thunderstorms were forming to the south and east of me so I decided to pack up and then meditate for a while. It was dead quiet on the mountain this morning, just the wind through the trees and a few squirrels and blue jays arguing over who gets what. That checked off the list I headed down to the cabin to start cleaning and packing. We will spend the night in Springerville at the in-laws and then head out early Tuesday to San Diego so I can get back to work.