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| Looking across summit lake is Mt Attenuator, W7W/RS-038. Keep walking north on the trail around the lake. No need to look for the boot path to the summit as the wide beaten path goes to the summit. The trail that continues north is hard to find. |
On a sunny Sunday, 9/1 at about 10:30 am hiking partner Ms Pat WT7N and myself were at the trail head at the end of the road. A .9 mile hike upward took us to a T intersection at Twin Lakes. We headed north to Summit Lake for 1.5 miles and then a bit further on the beaten path we were on top of Mt Attenuator. This summit doesn't have a name on the map so the SOTA ARM for WA named it for us. I think it should be called Mt Summit or Summit Mtn since it in view of Summit Lake.
Interesting factoid: Looking at Google Earth I can see that Summit Lk is part of prominent SOTA summit.
The summit has enough room for many picnickers and one radio operator. I strapped my 18 ft fish pole to a small dead tree and extended the doublet legs out with mason line. After the first hikers came up I realized my line was interfering with the beaten path. Lucky I was done making QSOs on HF and removed the obstacle. 18 HF Qs and one 2M QSOs were made.
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| The usual set up for KR7W HF operation: 18 ft fish carbon fish pole, 44 ft doublet fed with TV twin lead to 4:1 Balun, KX-3 set for 6 W w/ palm paddle, 3S LiPo battery. The radio sits on my pack as a desk in the shade to prevent over heating. The coaxial dipole connected to the aprs 2M radio is also strapped to the tree. |
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| From Mt Attenuator, views of Mt Rainier and Coplay Lk can be had to the south. |
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| It's Sept 1 and the blueberry bushes are beginning to show fall is on the way. This view shows Summit Lk and Bearhead Mtn, our next SOTA stop. |
The trail to Summit Lk is described here: http://www.wta.org/go-hiking/hikes/summit-lake
After returning the 1.5 miles to the T in the trail at Twin Lakes... we decided to head south 1.3 miles to the boot path up to Bearhead Mtn. The trail heads gradually upward to the turnoff. This is another one of those trails where the turnoff is the beaten path and the regular trail to the south became a rabbit trail. The .8 mile to the summit was pretty challenging for us late in the day.
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| This is Bearhead Mtn as seen from Mt Attenuator. The trail traverses around the right side and the summit assault is on the far side. |
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| The usual Geo Bench Mark. |
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| Same set up as Mt Attenuator above. |
As I arrived on the summit, I noticed three hikers in a group. We said the usual "Hi" and moved on to pick a place to operate. The radio was on the air at 4 PM LT, which was an hour later than I had planned on. During my hamming one of the hikers came by and asked me what I was doing. This nice lady was from Sweden and I took some time to explain to her about ham radio and the score keeping game called SOTA. She took my picture with her Nokia smart phone to show her friends back home. Four 40M, 21 20M, and 3 2M QSOs were made.
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| Pack as a desk for the radio. Soft Heather bushes to sit. No bugs to complain about on this trip. |
The 20 meter band was in pretty good shape and this made making QSOs pretty easy and plentiful. Thanks to Chasers on the east coast who waited around for me.
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| The first 4 QSOs were on 40 meters. KH2TJ was on a summit and weak to copy but the S2S QSO was made. |
The hike down began at 5 PM LT, a bit latter than I like, but the trip back to the TH was uneventful. It was a pretty successful SOTA outing with two summits visited. The drive down the crappy 9 mile FS road was in the daylight which was a good thing.
Trip info to Bearhead Mtn can be found here: http://www.wta.org/go-hiking/hikes/bearhead
End of Report. Thanks for reading this far. Best Regards,
Rich KR7W
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