The 2-Part, 48-Point, 7-Peak, 7-day, 1393-Mile SOTA Road Trip Extravaganza: An Argument For Granting Green Vans Mountain Goat Awards

Look, I’m exhausted. Maybe even a little cranky. This past week AA1F and I chipped away at the thousand points we need to earn our Summits-On-The-Air Mountain Goat awards. We didn’t actually walk all that far…but I am not sure you can deny us our effort regardless. The Google Maps app predicts nearly 29 hours of driving time alone. I am now at 374 points and AA1F has 322. I’ve made my way up, mostly walking, 82 mountains…and I am still not even halfway done!

This post will largely be for the naysayers who think we may be piling on a load of Bravo Sierra. Or alternatively, for those who simply cannot believe any two people would bother spending a vacation this way. Just to make it a bit more asinine, along with our dog Nellie, we took our cat, Officer Clyde (named after his superior investigatory skills) with us camping. He was thrilled… (He’s hiding under the passenger seat of the van.)

Part one of the trip was decided Friday night at 10pm. We would activate Killington Peak (W1/GM-002, 10 points), Ludlow (Okemo) Mountain (W1/GM-037, 6 points), and Mount Ascutney (W1/GM-008, 4 points) on Saturday. Then we’d camp out at whatever campground that we could get a last minute reservation at (Coolidge State Park Campground in Vermont). On Sunday we would activate Mount Mansfield (W1/GM-001, 10 points) and then Burke Mountain (W1/NK-004, 4 points). We never made it to Mount Ascutney. Additionally Coolidge State Park Campground (K-3109) and Darling State Park (K-8305), which Burke Mountain was a part of, were also POTA destinations. The total for this would be 543 miles of driving, four peaks worth 30 SOTA points, and 2 POTA activations. We would head home on Sunday night and rest up Monday.

Tuesday we were back on the road. This time we knew we wanted to get to the Adirondack High Peaks mostly to be able to drive up Whiteface Mountain (W2/GA-003, 10 points). Again we found a last minute available campsite in the area (Buck Pond Campground). While we were there, we managed to also activate Gore Mountain (W2/GA-029, 6 points) and Mount Van Hoevenberg (W2/GA-393, 2 points). The total for this portion would be 850 miles of driving, three peaks worth 18 points, and all QSOs could be considered POTA activations of the Adirondack State Park (K-2001). Oh yeah, and for this part, we were taking Officer Clyde on his first camping trip…

So, as consummate hikers and having so many 4000s footers worth 10 points a piece in the relatively nearby White Mountains, why such a bizarre set of road trips for SOTA points? Well, at 11 years old, our remarkable trail dog Nellie–shall we just say–does not enjoy hiking such relentless peaks anymore. And we have never asked anyone to take care of her for us. So, our hiking these days really has to keep her comfort and abilities in mind. Nellie still loves smaller hikes, but at 1 point a piece, activating only the gentler mountains may extend our quest for the Mountain Goat award into multiple decades. To answer the question, all of these peaks either could be driven up, had gondolas to or near the top, and/or involved hikes with less than 1000 foot vertical gain at a reasonably gentle slope. We also needed to keep in mind that temperatures in the 80s or more would not allow for the pets to be left unattended in the van. In some ways, this was a bit of a complicated trip.

KILLINGTON PEAK (W1/GM-002, 10 POINTS)

Unlike Stratton Mountain, the K1 Express Gondola does not allow dogs on board. So, I went first while AA1F hung out in Limey (the van) with Nellie (the dog).

This is looking back down to the Killington base lodge from the scratchy gondola window.

After a 1.25 mile ride, the scenic gondola ride ends within the SOTA activation zone on the peak of Killington.

I took the short hike up to the official (and officially small) summit and was met with a host of radio towers. And people.

I set up the 20M EFHW antenna at about 2 feet off the ground, parallel to the Long Trail, and hoped for the best. There just was not any room for a better set up.

Between the nearby radio towers and the horrific antenna deployment, it wasn’t surprising that the RF interference and intermodulation was tremendous. The bands also seemed flat as a pancake. I struggled to get my 4 contacts. And sorta ignored AA1F who kept buzzing me impatiently on the HT to ask when I was going to be done.

I walked back through the mountaintop picnic area, got on the gondola again, and handed off the antenna to AA1F on the bottom. I felt a bit vindicated when it took him just as long to complete the activation. But it was approaching 6pm, and we had missed the Mount Ascutney autoroad hours…those four points were off the table…

LUDLOW (OKEMO) MOUNTAIN (W1/GM-037, 6 POINTS)

We debated whether we could get to Okemo in time to drive up the autoroad. A little clever sleuthing (i.e., calling the resort), and we found out that the road essentially did not close. Woo hoo! Less than 45 minutes later we were parked and ready for the 0.3 mile walk to the summit.

AA1F got on the air, and I climbed the watchtower.

Look closely and you can see AA1F.

The only views were from the tower. You could see some of the Okemo ski mountain infrastructure.

I activated next, successfully, and we were ready to head off to the Campground.

COOLIDGE STATE PARK CAMPGROUND (K-3109)

We were racing the sunlight as we drove into Coolidge State Park looking for our campsite. Plan was, I would set up camp and antennas while AA1F headed back out to secure us some food.

Vermont state campgrounds are downright luxurious and despite booking the site the day before, we were able to snag a lean-to (all of which are named for trees).

Nellie, a very experienced camper in her own right, found her new little house right away.

Some paracord and a tarp draped over the front face of the log structure,…

…a couple of tarps on the floor, and sleeping arrangements for three (yes, Nellie has her own mat and sleeping bag), and my domestic duties were achieved. These pictures are from the next morning, where you can see I ran the radio straight into the lean-to overnight. I find it quite peaceful to drift off to late night 75M ragchews. Something about the sounds of inebriation and inanity put me right to sleep. I am not kidding.

Earning his vicious hunter stripes, AA1F drove back in with a couple of pizzas as I was finishing stringing up the 80M off-center fed dipole and the 40M end-fed halfwave antennas. The last tendrils of sunlight were about to disappear…

I made a new friend while chomping on some Italian cuisine, and we played FT8 together. Daddy Longlegs happen to be one of my favorite bugs. Interestingly, while writing these words right now, I learned that the legend says these “harvestmen” have extremely poisonous venom but for some reason can’t reach human skin to bite us (a myth apparently). I have always found them to be gentle and amusing outdoor companions. And its a good thing, because they were all over the lean-to!

MOUNT MANSFIELD (W1/GM-001, 10 POINTS)

We packed up the campground and headed to Mount Mansfield, Vermont’s tallest peak and home of the Stowe Ski Area. We drove up the autoroad, and then would have a 3 mile round trip hike along the ridge in order reach the “chin”, i.e. the high point.

An amazingly obsessive person ran 1.5 miles of string on each side of the designated trail in order to protect the alpine meadow. I kept thinking about trip wire on the very steep cliffs.

We were facing weather.

We could see rain closing in on us, but we wanted our 10 points.

We reached the summit and tucked into a spot within the string boundaries. If you look closely, you can see the horrible antenna set up that I deployed. That is the balun of the 20M EFHW antenna tied with paracord to the carabiner on my backpack.

And if you look between the pink lines, you can see the radiator wire of the antenna tossed over the cliff.

Here is AA1F and Nellie and a view of the entire setup. Look at those clouds!! We were getting reports from locals on 146.52 that there was thunder in the area. As you might imagine, contacts on such a crappy antenna set-up were hard to come by. But we were successful!

We packed up quickly and raced off back to the van. The following photo is not altered in any way. I don’t climb mountains for views per se anymore, but sometimes the scenery is mindboggling.

BURKE MOUNTAIN (W1/NK-004, 4 POINTS) AND DARLING STATE PARK (K-8305)

We made it down the Mansfield autoroad just in time to be hit with thunderstorms. It was really amazing that we managed to make the activation, and in fact, perhaps we shouldn’t have been on the air. But 10 points are too tempting to leave on the table! Now we had to decide if we were going to try to make it to Burke Mountain, the gates of which shut at 8pm. It was 5:30pm. The hike along the Mansfield Ridge took longer than we anticipated. The trip to Burke was 1 3/4 hours according to google maps. Could we make it?! Apparently we could!

We reached the autoroad and drove right into the activation zone. The Mid Burke Express Gondola ended at the top parking lot.

Unexpectedly, Burke Mountain was nestled in Darling State Park. Which turned out to be a POTA site! This was really the only mountain of this entire trip where we managed to get a bit of a pile up.

Of course, with the sun setting, we needed to leave no later than 7:45pm. We cut the activation short after making as many qsos as we could squeeze in. It was time to head back to Boston with 30 more SOTA points under our belts!

BUCK POND CAMPGROUND / ADIRONDACK STATE PARK (K-2001)

Back home Sunday night, Monday a free day…but being someone who takes “freeform” vacations–and a very limited number of them at that–I worried that if we rested for even one more day, my vacation would be over. So, back online, and within a few minutes had a campsite secured in the high peaks of the Adirondacks for Tuesday, and off we went!

We reached the Buck Pond Campground in Vermontville, NY late Tuesday evening after a fairly traffic-free, 5 1/2 hour drive from Boston. One of the unexpected highlights was chatting via 2M from around Saratoga to Lake George with Tom AK2G. We had passed his travel van with 2M antennas on the roof and through out a call sign on 146.52. Sure enough he got back and we caravanned together spontaneously for the next 30 minutes! It was a lovely rag chew!

The weather was on-and-off rain with threats of thunder for the rest of the week, and this probably contributed to the very few occupied sites at the campground. There was no one around us! We nestled into our wooded site, without a glimpse of fellow humanity. It was bliss!

AA1F and I are experienced campers. This translates into us *not* bringing the kitchen sink with us when we car camp. Our entire infrastructure consisted of a Rainshadow 3 Tarptent (my cherished older and no longer produced A-frame model) an additional tarp as a rainfly, and classic blue department store pop-up tent). Oh yeah, sleeping bags, sleeping pads, and clothing. And a ton of radio gear. That is it.

We set the tent up in the rain, using the blue pop-up as a temporary shelter to keep us and it dry. Given the threat of rain for the next few days, I decided to add an additional tarp up as a rainfly. As a piece of backpack gear, I am quite happy with my REI Quarterdome SL tarp. But for camping or even winter hiking, I have found the tarps from Aquaquest to be amazing. One thing to look for in a tarp is daisychains (tie-downs) around the edges and ridgelines. Silnylon and silpoly fabrics are ideal. The Tarptent absolutely does not leak, but water can splash in from the sides in a heavy rain, and condensation can build up when there is water on the roof. This is otherwise the largest and lightest backpacking tent that I know of. But since I was not backpacking, I figured I would add the security of an additional tarp. (Please note, I am not sponsored for anything on this site. This is all my gear and I like to discuss them.)

The antenna went up next. By now the sun was long gone, so I was setting this up in the dark. The pictures are from the next day. I anchored the unun (my homemade one!) to the picnic table and ran the 40M 1/2 wave radiator out to a tree. I used a little loop of electrical tape to hold it to the frame of the pop-up canopy and get it out of the way. My unun was not watertight, and I did not want to get it wet. I could get the coax back to the tent and listen to the radio through the night now. I thought I’d move it for the remainder of the week, but since I was only using an Icom IC-705 at ten watts to run digital modes at camp, I left it where it was. AA1F either used his 20M EFHW for some late evenings on 20M SSB, or even his MFJ-1979 vertical whip on an MFJ-336T magmount on the van. Radio into the evening at a campgound with zero cell service is a lot like I imagine the old Fireside Chats to be. An entertainment and a comfort in the face of the neural assaults of a modern world.

We were nervous as this was Officer Clyde’s first overnight trip away from home. He is a young and very athletic cat. We were worried he would get scared and bolt and we would never see him again. Turns out he made no real attempt to leave the van, and was happy to share it with AA1F at night.

Nellie, who loves the Tarptent, and I slept in our blissful fabric house. You have no idea how much I like to sleep in a tent! Unfortunately, we did not plan very well. The nearest store was a half hour away. We decided to dive in to a box of poptarts for dinner and worry about food the next day.

WHITEFACE MOUNTAIN (W2/GA-003, 10 POINTS)

We woke up when we woke up, and headed into Saranac Lake for coffee and breakfast. We decided to drive up Whiteface Mountain, today for another cool 10 SOTA points. The actual summit is a short walk from the parking area, or interestingly, sometimes an elevator ride!

Fittingly, we secured some Dunkin’ Donuts extra large coffees in an (now extinct) Radio Shack plaza! This was after turning off of Route 73 to get there! This was becoming into a dreamscape of RF symbolism!

This will be my third trip up Whiteface for SOTA, but this time I decided to operate digital modes. While AA1F activated the summit and I stayed back with the pets, I tried to get the timing right on WSJT-X and my new cheap Evolve III Maestro computer (more on this set up to come). I could not get anything to decode, despite seeing plenty of FT8 signals. I had limited cell service and could not get the internet tethering to work. Ultimately, I watched the cell phone’s clock and pressed the time clock settings on the computer when the cell switched to a new minute. It worked! (After about 30 attempts…) The decoding started and I was ready to activate the peak myself.

Maybe because I was frustrated, or maybe because we had been here before, we do not have a lot of pictures from Whiteface. Here is one.

MOUNT VAN HOEVENBERG (W2/GA-393, 2 POINTS)

In the late afternoon, with the weather cooling off a bit, we headed to Mt. Van Hoevenberg, home of the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid NY and still an Olympics training center. We figured it would be okay to leave the Officer alone in the car for a few hours (and it was).

The walk up this nearly 3000′ mountain had less the 800′ vertical gain from the east side trail which led from the training complex. The trail was superbly made, and would be a great family hike or one for first-timers. Below, well, I was going to tell you this was a bobsled run until I actually read the description on the website — it is a rollercoaster.

This is just a picture of me on one of the many staircases carved into the mountain. A mini-Tecumseh!

We reached the summit and could once again see some weather surrounding us. A few spurts of rain made us rush to get our 4 points. We did!

You could see our lonely green van hanging out on the way back down.

And an unusual battalion of some extremely low black helicopters that remained hanging in the air for quite some time not too far from us. We made jokes that the were ARDF’ing our signals (you hams will know what I mean!)

We made it back to the van, confirmed Clyde’s well-being and attempted to extract ourselves from the Van Hoevenberg Olympic complex…only to find we were gated in!!! This is one of AA1F’s greatest fears coming true! After attempting a few routes, and realizing they were all blocked, we finally stopped to inspect the gates themselves. Turns out, they were not actually locked, and with a little bit of muscle combined with aggravation, we were able to hoist one up and be on our merry way.

GORE MOUNTAIN (W2/GA-029, 6 POINTS)

Our final push, and once again facing the potential of bad weather, would be Gore Mountain, a ski resort in North Creek, NY. It would be a 2 hour drive from the campground, a gondola ride up to the false summit, and a 2.4 mile round trip hike to the true summit. And AA1F and I would have to do it sequentially rather than together because the weather was nearly 90 degrees and the pets would not be able to be left alone. No dogs were allowed on the gondola anyway. And the last gondola down the mountain was at 3:45pm. It was 12:00pm by the time I boarded the lift. We were racing the clock.

I jumped off the gondola, got directions to the summit trail from the lift attendant, and hustled to make it to the top. The grade was fairly steep, despite being on gravel road, because this was the black diamond portion of the mountain. The path descended past the false summit and the ascended toward the peak. Once I reached the SOTA activation zone, i.e., 25 vertical meters from the summit, I stopped and set up my radio. This is the view up to the end of the non-operating chairlift to the top.

And this is the look back down toward the base.

I plopped everything down in the meadow of the ski run, and set the 20M EFHW antenna up in the treeline.

Problem was that in my haste, I forgot paracord. I compensated by simply wrapping the radiator wire in the spruce trees. This probably contributed to the fact that despite getting on the air in about an 45 minutes from my departure from the parking lot, it took me nearly an hour to make 4 contacts at the summit. I kept getting panicky 2M messages from AA1F, who figured he’d run out of time for his activation.

Alas, with a combination of 2M and 20M qsos, I successfully operated. I half ran back to the gondola to try to give AA1F a fighting chance at his 6 points. And many of you know I only run when chased. By bears. But I got down in enough time for AA1F to get on the gondola and make his activation too, bringing the total of our acquired SOTA points for the week up to 48!

We returned to Buck Pond for one more night of camping, packed up Friday morning, and headed back to Boston encountering various episodes of dramatic weather along the ride. Despite all of the atmospheric volatility of the prior week, we made all but one of our activations! A fantastic trip!

SUMMARY

This is a long post, and it has been hanging over my head these past few days, waiting to be completed. I have been back to work and it has been busy. The vacation is an increasingly fading memory, as happens. Now that this adventure is spit onto the proverbial page, I feel clear to think about the next ones.

I can make an adventure out of a walk to the post office. The world outside my doors, and heck even the one inside my skull, is a delightful playground to be explored. A radio, antenna, and battery are a perfect combined excuse to give me permission to look in the various nooks and crannies of the innumerable shared public spaces around us.

Lately I have been noticing that while I love to make phone contacts, it is really the RF itself — the wonders of propagation of invisible waves adulterated with coded messages — that piques childlike awe in me. I fancy myself passing a coded note in elementary school, tucking it into a worm hole, and a recipient a world away reaching into that quantum tunnel, pulling out my scribblings, and deciphering it with Cracker Jack box decoder ring. As much as radio makes sense, it does not make sense at all.

But I am 48 points closer to my goal of attaining the SOTA Mountain Goat award. I am glad it’s a long haul game. There are so many pockets of this earth to be looked into. And a thousand points is as good a reason as any.

May our paths cross,

KM1NDY