What is 73? My Number Of SOTA Points After Activating W2/EH-001 Berlin Mountain!
In the Parks-On-The-AIr program, you get awards for everything. Don’t believe me? Check out the “Warthog” award on AA1F’s qrz page. Summits-On-The-Air is a different ballgame. Us hikers-stroke-radio operators all want the “Mountain Goat” award. This means we need to acquire 1000 points as activators of summits. And nearly every peak in Massachusetts is a single point. And, you can only get credit for activating the same summit one time per calendar year. So, after hiking 33 mountains since I started SOTA in December 2019, and obtaining a minimum of 4 QSOs per summit, I now have a grand total of 73 points. Only 927 points to go!
When we get a chance to activate a summit that is worth more than a point, we go for it. Generally it requires a long drive, because only one point hills are located near Boston. Berlin Mountain, a SOTA 2-pointer situated with a summit at 2818′ in Berlin NY but also a sizeable chunk of hillside in Williamstown MA, was our goal this weekend. We parked at Petersburg Pass just over the Route 2 border into NY, at an elevation of just over 2000 feet. This would give us access to the Taconic Crest Trail–a 37-mile ridgeline hiking trail that darts back and forth into Vermont, New York, and Massachusetts–near its northern terminus.
We logged in to the trail register, and set off down the well-worn and extremely well-maintained trail. The hike would take us up a steep approach to the Taconic Mountain ridgeline. Then we would follow the saddle between Raimer Mountain and Berlin Mountain, a relatively easy path known as “the Berlin Pass”. The ascent to Berlin Mountain would be steady and steep for the remaining 3/4 of a mile.
The steepest section of trail was encountered within the first half mile of the hike as we ascended to the ridgeline. The above picture does not give it justice, but at that point the grade of the trail was 30% (or 16.7 degrees), gaining 300 feet in elevation in just 0.2 mile. It was here we encountered some thru-hikers. My advice to anyone taking this router—just muscle through. Overall, this is a relatively easy walk for an experienced hiker.
From trailhead to summit was 2.8 miles, all along a cadillac-sized 4-wheeler trail. We did encounter a group of polite ATVers (even if they were in an explicitly “no motorized vehicles” section of the trail). The overly compressed trail was muddy and rutted in several areas, and would probably be terrible after a prolonged rain. The trail sign shown below would imply the total mileage from the Berlin Mountain summit to Route 2 was over 3 miles in length, but this was off by a few tenths of a mile according to my GPS. We made it to the gorgeous bald top of Berlin Mountain in about 1.5 hours. Staring back at us from across the horizon was Mount Greylock, Massachusetts’ tallest peak, elevation 3491′, and a SOTA 6-pointer. That picture above of me posing on the summit? The mountain in the background is Mount Greylock.
The usual 20M EFHW antenna was strung up in a conifer, nearly horizontally-oriented, at a height off the ground of approximately 20 feet.
We found a block of concrete to operate from, probably a residual footing of a long dismantled fire tower. Some of you may have noticed that I love to operate from found objects! In total, AA1F and I only made 13 contacts on 20M. The band seemed a bit wonky at 3pm local time (ET). That said, we reached France, Puerto Rico, Oregon, Montana, Arkansas, Arizona, Kansas, and even had a broken qso with Spain. We tried 80M too just for the heck of it. Oddly, it is not the first time we have had propagation issues in this geographical area. Harvey Mountain in Austerlitz NY was also an RF wormhole when we activated it last year. Regardless, the activation of Berlin Mountain was a success! I got my 2 points!
Trip Stats: round-trip distance = 5.66 miles, total elevation (vertical) gain = 1388 feet, total moving time = 2.5 hours, total trip time = 5.5 hours.
Always a blast! Looking forward to the next one my chaser friends!
73s, KM1NDY