Help! I Fell In A Hole! Click Below To See What Happens Next On “SOTA Mount Tecumseh 2025: Winter Bonus Season…”
(And don’t forget to smash that “Like” button, ring the “Notification” bell, and go ahead and subscribe! It would really be just the right type of help I am looking for!)
Okay, okay, I’m trolling, I’m trolling. KM1NDY.com has never gotten a single subscriber, never notified anyone, and is satisfied with our exactly zero likes. Because I don’t have any of these buttons on my site; it’s a secret site, remember? Shhhhh….. In fact, that picture of me postholing is also fake. Or at least staged (I mean, I really do have my leg in a snow hole that goes up to my thigh. It’s just that I put my leg there, purposefully, so I could proudly display it for all the world–and the dozen people who will actually read this–to see!) Yup, there it is, that’s my leg! Stuck in a snow hole!
Bear with me, I am trying to demonstrate something here. If you are asking yourself, what the heck is “postholing”, well, you have now outed yourself as being from Florida and never having ventured north of Kissimmee. And no, it has nothing to do with needing one of these things… (This pic is for AA1F, because he loves his Cherry Red Tractor more than me. If you squint, you can see the tractor peaking out from the edge of the building. And if you aren’t from the sticks, then that thar thingee down below is a mighty fine post hole digger. Or simply, along with the tractor it makes holes in otherwise perfectly good ground).
A lot like I make holes in the snow when I venture too far left or right from the compacted central part of the late February Mount Tecumseh summit trail, i.e., the classic wintery hiking term “postholing”. Because your leg looks like a fence post stuck in a snow hole. And taking selfies to try to demonstrate the depth of a posthole is not easy. That snow actually reaches my mid-thigh below.
Then there is AA1F, who nearing the summit, channels his best Vanna White impression. And I’ll go right ahead and take a stab at solving the puzzle Pat, “They who sing through the summer must dance in the winter.” Importantly though, AA1F appears to be standing on terra firma. The base layer of snow on Tecumseh seems close to three feet, but the packed hiking trail looks almost like a concrete sidewalk dusted with a thin layer of frosty powder. But go ahead and step a little too far over on either side and…well you know. The dreaded posthole. The packing of the trail occurs as more and more people use it, and today, I would say we saw around thirty people and nearly a dozen dogs trudging up that center safety zone.
We took in the view at the halfway point called the “View”. It lives up to its name. That break in the trees is the disturbingly monikered “Boneyard” ski trail of the Waterville Valley resort.
In fact, AA1F made one of his classic gifs out of one such pile of bones skiing down the icy trail. Watch it enough times and it looks like he is bouncing off of my head. Honestly, it is a bit hypnotic…
Now anyone who has hiked Tecumseh (like we have here, and here, and here) knows that the hike from the View to the summit is a grueling, relentless ascent.
But we made it. Even if I managed to get passed by every single person who even thought about hiking up it today. A bit frozen too. But happily we only had to break out our recently acquired Yaesu FT-60 handi-talkie to obtain the four VHF contacts needed for a successful Summits-On-The-Air activation. Again, ole Tecumseh granted us 13 points toward our goal of SOTA Mountain Goat. Many thanks dear Friend! And to the guys that chased us up here too!
We got back to the Van and snacked on frozen pizza. You’ll notice we did not have our shepherd Georgie with us this time, and we had to race to get back home to her.
Amazingly our early start paid off. The dashboard clock, ten minutes fast, read 2pm. I needed to take a picture of it, because who would believe AA1F and I could make it off a mountain before sunset? Our headlamps were needless gear, as were our bothy bag, HF radio (KX2) and antenna, DIY roll-up VHF slim jim antenna, paracord, and runs of coax.
Summits-On-The-Air is a rather grueling game of perseverance. I started in 2019 (it’s 2025 now). I still have 222 points to go to get to my 1000 goal after today. At 1000 activator points, you are crowned a SOTA “Mountain Goat”. I think we still have about two years to go. There is only one player that will get their Mountain Goat before us in the New England region (W1) if we keep up this current pace. Once Fred gets his Goat, there will be only 11 people in W1 that have ever achieved it. AA1F and I may make 12 and 13. And only a tiny cluster of us in New England are on pace to ever finish this worldwide game.
Learning to read the mountains is a major part of successfully achieving the Goat. Knowing which mountains to drive or take a chairlift up, what hikes have the highest SOTA points-to-trail difficulty ratio, how to take advantage of winter bonus points season, when to confront versus flee from inclement weather, and what radio equipment to bring, are all a part of a successful SOTA strategy.
But mostly SOTA is about a deep-seated need to keep doing something somewhat absurd. Once I hiked a 140 mile trail. I was elated when I reached the end. But after a day or two of rest it occurred to me I was ready to turn around and do it again. I am afraid SOTA will be like that, with a leg or two always stuck in it if I veer too far off the path.
Signing off with you on my mind.
KM1NDY