Activating SOTA On Mount Osceola And Discussing Freedom

There’s no point to climbing a mountain. The view is great! Good exercise! Nice to get fresh air! Like Sisyphus I’ve trudged up 66 peaks since the end of 2019 using Summits-On-The-Air as my excuse. I barely notice the view, I routinely subsist off of pizza and poptarts, and the air blowing in off of the ocean near my sea-level home is pretty fresh too. There simply is no good reason to scramble up the side of a giant rock. Unless it is standing between where you are and where you want to go.

Mount Osceola (W1/HA-011) is the 27th tallest peak in New Hampshire at 4340 feet. The hike from the seasonally opened Tripoli Road is 6.4 miles roundtrip with a vertical elevation gain of over 2000 feet. It is a bit of a sister peak to the nearby Mount Tecumseh, the home of the Waterville Valley Ski Resort. You can read about our adventures on Tecumseh here.

The trail is a steady upward climb. Beautifully managed. Not easy per se (no 4000 footer in the White Mountains of New Hampshire is), but not a bad beginner big peak for someone in reasonable shape. At ten years old, I wonder how much longer Nellie will actually be able to keep going. Long rocky trails in 80F weather exact a more expensive toll on her these days. I deeply believe she would still rather be with us than not, and I try to brush thoughts of the inevitable aside.

This is the best view the entire trail up, with Mount Tecumseh hidden behind the conifer on the right.

When we get to the rocky slab on the summit, we can see the ski runs of Waterville Valley.

And a little closer up…

I used my trusty REI Quarter Dome SL tarp to set up a sun shelter. Walking sticks and paracord provided a ridgeline, guys, and supports. You must know how I feel about this by now…bring a tarp!

AA1F and I set up the 20M EFHW over the top of the trees above the shelter. We explained to another hiking group that, no, we were not camping overnight, and that this was ham radio. It felt like way too many people were out here today. FInally, after the day camp is set up, I take a look around. Below is the view from the Mount Osceola’s summit cliff. And further below, drawn in pink, is the course of the antenna. The balun (arrow) is in the tree on the right and the free end is tied up toward the left with the asterisk denoting which branch the paracord is thrown over. We heard people complaining there was no shade at the top; I thought, there are ways to fix that. Those concrete blocks are footings for a tower that is no longer there.

AA1F pulled out his RigExpert Stick 230 to check the VSWR, a very reasonable 1.32 at 14.25 MHz. If you look closely, you can see where scratches have ruined the screen. My only beef with this otherwise nifty device is how fragile the display is.

It did not matter. Band conditions were horrible. And even with spotting, it was tough to make the four contacts needed to complete a SOTA activation on 20M. AA1F did manage to get ten qsos for a joint White Mountain National Forest POTA activation as well.

We mostly had to hunt. Even with spotting, very few people were coming back to us. At least those we could hear. And spinning through the bands largely revealed a few dx stations. It was a gorgeous day, so maybe everyone was outside?

We packed up, grateful for the late sunset, as we would anticipated getting to the van around dusk.

We made it back to the trailhead with plenty of light to spare. And me now 262 out of 1000 points away from my SOTA Mountain Goat award.

Like I said, there is no point to climbing mountains. Not even for SOTA. But I do it. Over and over and over again. Hundreds of times now. Not long ago, there were not that many of us crawling over these rocky gargantuas. Trailheads overflow with vehicles these days. I watch the other hikers, many very fit with almost no gear, nearly running up and down the trail. Still others, you can tell they don’t do this very often. All of them sit at the top for a few minutes, talk about the view. Laugh. Some have a celebratory beer they hiked all the way up with. I find myself wondering why they bother. Not a snarky, derogatory “why bother?” But a inquest into their motivation. For the view. For the exercise. For the fresh air. Everyone exits the mountain by early afternoon, as the common lore is that violent weather will sneak up on you if you stay on the summit past noon. I am grateful for this, because finally I have the mountain to myself.

I don’t hike for the view; I’ve seen it. I don’t hike for the exercise; I am not that fit. I don’t hike for fresh air; sometimes I can barely catch my breath. I climb mountains to find freedom. To escape the confines of manmade civilization. With its manmade rules, regulations, hierarchies, social constructs, and problems. To free myself from self-importance and attempts at relevance. To conform to the laws I fully believe in, those of the natural world. To be where humans are homogenized and inconsequential. We are all the same, and entirely irrelevant on a mountaintop. No scrambling up some fantasy pecking order. If you fail to follow nature’s laws, the repercussions are grave. These laws do not need interpretation because they are without language. These laws do not wait for a deliberation. These laws are not a method of exerting control. Nor are these laws created. They just are. Humans venturing into the natural world are vulnerable, and therefore tend toward a very polite society. Ultimately, nature does not care if you follow its rules or not. It is without judgement, only consequence. I have learned that most people will avoid walking up hills; you can shed most of mankind as well as their problems simply by trekking up a mountain.

Recently I was asked why I was drawn to a certain social club over other ones, one with limited organizational structure and expressed rules. I did not have an answer readily available in the moment. As a productive member of society, I am law-abiding, as laws are intended to create a functioning society. But, I am naturally rule-avoidant, and I am finding that many social groups establish rules as a means of controlling and conforming its members. As far as recreational pursuits go, submission and conformation are not high on my list. And I will always gravitate toward free will.

For me, the radio, with its independent infrastructure, symbolizes freedom – the freedom to communicate. A radio on a mountaintop? Bliss.

KM1NDY