N1CLC: 2019-12-28 Poser Mtn.

I went up to Poser Mtn. today. Unlike last time, I expect to get my one whole point (actually it's 2). You see, I packed up and left the summit with only three contacts the last time. Although I “activated” the summit, I didn’t get the points because I only had 3 contacts. For some reason I thought I only needed 3 (instead of 4) and I was in a time crunch. The last time I was up there, the wind was really blowing and I’m hoping to avoid that today. One other interesting factoid is that I was on this peak exactly two years to the day! Creepy!

(click on pictures for larger)

I took my time getting out of the house and left about 9AM. It’s about a 45 minute drive and I planned a two hour hike. From the road to the summit is only about 1 mile (see my route here)... but it’s a bushwhack. It takes time because I want to avoid stepping on living growth wherever possible so it’s slow going. Also, at times, it can get thick. So a lot of stop and go, plan, and go around. On the plus side, the temprature was about 55 F, so it made for pleasant hiking weather.

As you can see from my route, I head up to a ridge to the east of the summit and then head over to the summit. The route avoids some very thick and tall chaparral and the terrain is a bit easier. On the way up, I can stay between the chaparral, follow natural drainage and animal trails.

Once on the summit, I setup the K6ARK ultra-light multi-band antenna and got to work. No wind.. Yeah! I wanted to start this activation on CW. I’m slow and asked for a lot of repeats but the chasers were patient with me and helped me practice my CW.

What was cool was that I logged a lot of the same familiar contacts that I usually talk to but using morse code (CW) this time. After logging about 9 CW contacts, I talked to a couple of SOTA operators on a San Jacinto using my little handi-talki. They had to snowshoe to the top and we had a very clear signal using our HTs (approximately 66 miles due north). I worked a couple of stations via voice on side band as well.

I wrapped it up with about 15 contacts and then started the bushwhack back to the car. It seemed that I got into a bit more brush but was it fine. I stuck to my plan which worked a hell of a lot better than the last time I was up there.