Chapter 2: It's Wednesday AM and us four hikers are off to the meadow in search of SOTA peaks. I opted to activate Pyramid Pk and Ms Pat and Bro John want to give the hike a try also. Chuck has opted for Iron Mtn. Pyramid is on the far east side of the meadow and Iron (right next to Copper Mtn) are in the middle of the meadow. After a quick lunch and safety meeting at Mirror Lakes we split up.
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| Pyramid Peak looms across the meadow. Part of Iron Mtn can be seen on the R side of the foto. |
The WX is very pleasant with a high ceiling and no direct sunlight. The temp is 60-65 deg- great hiking conditions. As we hike across the vast meadow we are surrounded by gorgeous wildflowers and relentless BUGs. We are all wearing our mosquito bug hats... which for me distorts my depth perception.
After about an hour of walking, it's 1330 LT. Time to make handy talkie radio contact with Chuck AC7QN somewhere on Iron Mtn. Chuck reports that he had a too difficult time going up and is heading back to our campsite at Devils Dream. Also, on frequency is Casey WW7CH at the National Park radio shop. Casey plans to be in communications with us on 146.52 as well as watch my APRS tracks on aprs.fi.
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| KR7W Makes 2 meter contact on 146.52 per the safety meeting discussion. My elevation is about 6100 ft. |
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| Fish Pole mast is guyed 1/3 the way up. 44 ft doublet extends N-S with mason string tied to rocks. If there is any directionality - it would be E-W. |
1430 LT, we are on the summit. Wow! what a climb. What a view! At 1451 LT the HF Station is OTA. There are no trees on this summit. Just some goat trimmed grass, sort of like a lumpy lawn. Rocks provide decorations and means to hold the fish pole guy lines down to the earth... as well as secure the ends of the 44 ft doublet Inverted Vee. The only thing that wudda made this place better would be lawn chairs.
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| Nice soft rocks and grass- actually it was pretty comfy. Fish pole mast is on R. D72 APRS HT is next to KR7W's R elbow. |
I figured that we had at least a three hour walk back to our campsite... so I set a "Let's start putting it away" time of 1530 LT. I went directly to 20 meters because of its success with the previous activation. Eleven 20M CW QSOs and six 2M Qs were made. A lot of the 2M Qs were made while we were tearing the HF antenna farm down. It's always amazing to me that there are lots of folks monitoring 146.52... and I am glad that they do.
The hike down the steep scree slope and the rest of the way to the meadow went pretty quickly. Myself and Bro John slipped on the steep muddy trail a few times. Once in the vast meadow the trip was a long slog. For some variety we decided to stop at the Ranger Station Patrol Cabin in the meadow to check it out. Volunteer BC Ranger Phil was on duty and he showed us around the cabin. He mentioned that the WX report suddenly changed and that a low pressure front would be visiting us with rain for a few days.
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| Here's the Patrol Cabin / Ranger Station. My Bro John chats with VIP BC Ranger Phil. |
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| Check out the high snow level entrance door. Phil says that there was 6 ft of snow here this June. |
The next day was Thursday- the day we were scheduled to hike out of Devils Dream Camp to Somewhere. The plan was for us to hike across Emerald Ridge (the most scenic part of the Wonderland Trail, IMHO) and to South Puyallup Camp to spend the night. OR We could hike back to the car. The best choice for everyone was to hike to the car. The skies were rain free whilst we packed everything up... but as soon as we beat feet the 6 miles to Longmire we caught rain most of the way.
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| Here's our campsite at Devils Dream Camp the day after the trip to Pyramid Pk. Ranger Phil was right about the WX change... as it rained on us all night. |
Epilog: My apologies to the Chasers who followed my APRS tracks which had the wrong status message- which said that I was heading back to the TH instead of to W7W/RS-012. Of course, Thanks to the Chasers for being there to help make this somewhat difficult activation successful. Last thing: Sorry Phil that I didn't operate on 40M this time- as there was a lot to do in a short time and I just didn't think of it.
Flickr photos with captions can be seen here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kr7w-sota/sets/72157635145237964/
Happy Trails to You... Until we meet again.... on 14.061.
Rich kr7w
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