Activating Pico Peak, Uhhh, Like A Few Weeks Ago Now…I Mean A Month Ago… (Or More…)
This one is not hot off the presses… Nearly six weeks ago, AA1F and I hiked up Pico Peak for yet another Summits-On-The-Air 10 point activation. It all began here. In a parking lot across the street from the Inn at Long Trail. Except the Long Trail had actually been rerouted and now this trail was called the Sherburne Pass Trail. Take a good hard look at this, because you will see what it looks like a nearly 3 miles hike away soon enough…
The Sherburne Pass Trail from its origin on Route 4 is extremely nice. I mean a walk in the park nice. I actually cannot believe we ascended around 2000 feet so easily. After 2.7 miles the trail meets up with the 0.4 mile Pico Link trail which in part follows the ski trails to the summit. Pico Peak is a very popular ski mountain in the winter.
There is a small four-sided shelter for hikers to use at the junction of the Sherburne Pass Trail and the Pico Link. That is Nellie posing in front of the hut…
Here is the inside of the shelter. You can tell it has seen better days. I left a message in the notebook seen in the foreground.
Here’s what I wrote…
Now if you look below, you can see where the Pico Link trail pops out onto the Pico ski runs. They are a bit hard to see, but I put a circle of pink dots around the Inn at Long Trail, i.e., our starting point about 3 trail miles away!
As I approached the summit (AA1F was quite a bit ahead of me as usual), I noticed a fellow hiker with a contraption that looked a lot like a unassembled Arrow handheld yagi antenna tucked in the side pouch of his backpack. So, not being shy, I asked him if he was a ham. Turns out he is Philip KC2WAN! I radioed to AA1F that I met a fellow amateur, and introductions were made on the summit once we caught up. We offered an invitation to come hang out if he finished his activation before us and made our way to a peaceful looking nook near the first aid station and chair lift.
Being a lover of setting up antennas on manmade structures, I saw an opportunity to string the 20M EFHW from the ladder of the chairlift to the railing of the first aid station. If I look a bit proud of myself, well, its because I am! I got quite a delight out of this antenna deployment. You can see the unun hanging down in the right edge of the picture.
AA1F went ahead and started his activation, while I marched across the ski run to the Pico Peak sign…
…and slung my DIY 2M / 70CM slim jim antenna up over it!
A few moments later, Philip KC2WAN found us.
His hike had led him up the gondola at Killington Peak. You can see its ski runs below if you look carefully. And then across the ridge to Pico. He would continue on down Pico Peak to his campsite at Gifford Woods State Park. Which happens to be where we would secure a lean-to at over Columbus Day weekend in the near future…
Philip KC2WAN had only been able to secure three contacts on 2M FM thus far. So of course we let him jump on our HF station and finish his activation. He quickly made two contacts (remember, you only need four QSOs to complete a SOTA activation, so he had a little buffer.)
In the meantime, I had made two contacts on the 2M calling frequency. I secured a few more on twenty meters and called it a day. We parted ways with our new friend, and head back down the trail at dusk.
AA1F took a couple of pics of some interesting fungus to commemorate this immensely enjoyable trail.
And there you have it. An extremely pleasant hike and SOTA activation up Pico Peak in Vermont! This one, much like our totally unwritten about first ascent up Mount Hale last year, had almost been banished to the memory banks of our brains. But, alas, the documentation has now been signed and sealed and released to the world to mostly be ignored.
😉
Yours Over The Air,
KM1NDY