Following the footsteps of an English activator

Yes it’s sounds a little bit strange that a Bavarian aborigine, that’s me, is following in his own homeland the footsteps of an English SOTA activator. The reason is, that the second summit , that I activated on Sunday, i.e. the Sulzeleklammspitze OE/TI-628, has been activated the very first time by Phil, G4OBK, during his holidays 2012. The Sulzeleklammspitze is a relatively new SOTA summit, it got its SOTA-reference in April of 2011 and Phil took promptly the chance for a first activation.

Phil did already a fine job by writing a very nice activation report:
Karwendel Klettersteig DL/OE/G4OBK/P July 2012

The weatherforecast for Sunday looked very promising and therefore I decided to hike along the Mittenwalder Klettersteig, with the possibility to activate two SOTA summits.

Most of the visitors of the Westliche Karwendelspitze (OE/TI-293) or of the Mittenwalder Klettersteig choose to go up to the Karwendelgrube by cable car and from there hike up the last 0.5 hours up to the Westliche Karwendelspitze.

Of course, it would have been very tempting to ascent within 10 minutes abt. 1300 height meters while standing in a gondula. In comparison climbing up by ones own feet takes abt. 3 to 5 hours. But sitting the whole week in the office without any sports was enough motivation for me to climb up “the hard way” :wink:

I started early in the morning, at 06:00AM, from the car park in Mittenwald. More than one hour hiking was nearly completely in the dark. After gaining abt. 600 height meters elevation gain, the daylight began to lit the peaks of the nearby Wetterstein mountains. The view was more than rewarding.

When a finally arrived at the top of the Westliche Karwendelspitze, the valley down below was covered like with candy floss, also a very nice view.

It was very windy on this summit OE/TI-293 and it took me a little bit longer to set up my antenna, but finally I was ready to start my activation. It was a nice surprise, that the first callsign that I heard was VK3WE with a very loud signal. And even early in the morning an overall number of 30 contacts on the 20m and 30m bands found the way into my log.

After this nice activation, I proceeded to the Mittenwalder Klettersteig. On the way to the trail head of this via-ferrata I got a nice view down to the top station of the Karwendel cable car. The huge tube nearby the station, that looks like a oversized telescope, houses an alpine museum.

From the trail head of the Mittenwalder Klettersteig, I got a nice view across this beautiful ridge.

It was already late morning and in the meantime many mountaineers were climbing along the ridge.

The following photos might give you a nice impression about the Mittenwalder Klettersteig, which is well prepared with iron ropes and ladders in order to ensure safety on all exposed and difficult sections.

In between, one can enjoy the look back to the summit of the Westliche Karwendelspitze:

Below the second SOTA summit, that is the Sulzeleklammspitze, someone has mounted this traffic sign on this emergency hut :slight_smile: Luckily I left my bike down the valley.

A little bit of scrambling finally brought me on top of the Sulzeklammspitze OE/TI-628, where I started my second activation of the day.

Unfortunately I was two hours too early on this summit and RBNGate spotted me with the wrong SOTA reference on the 30m band. After changing to the 20m band, I was in time again and RBNGate took now the correct SOTA reference.

After nearly 60 contacts on the 20m and 30m bands I put all my HF equipment in my rucksack and continued the final sections of the nice ridge.

After another hour hiking along the ridge and two hours descending down to the valley I arrived finally after altogether 10 hours at the car park.

Thanks a lot for all the contacts.

73 Stephan, DM1LE

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