Mt. Otoio EA2/BI-059 by EA2IF/P on 03/04/2015

My XYL proposed me to spend Friday of the Easter Holidays at the nice village of Lekeitio to see a couple of friends of her childhood. I accepted the proposal and immediately searched for any SOTA in the area.
I soon identified Mount Otoio, which is very near Lekeitio and would let me do my first ever activation in EA2/BI area without being too much time off.
Lekeitio is in the Basque coast and about 145Km NorthWest from my QTH.
We got up early and the whole family including our dog Lucho arrived to Lekeitio before noon, met our friends and enjoyed walking by the sea, having a beer at a nice terrace in the sunshine and taking some pictures.
In this one you can see the top of the mountain Otoio behind the houses.

We were explained that this Little island in the following picture can be reached on foot when tide is low.

See some more nice views taken during our walk. The feel was nice in the sunshine but the temperature was not at all as to be in bathing suits at the beach or swimming in the sea.

We had a very nice Spanish late lunch in a party of about 17 between adults and children and after dessert and coffee, I explained that I was leaving to mount Otoio for everybody’s astonishment and my wife’s indifference, hi, hi!
The ascent starting point was less than 5 Km west from where we were, so I quickly arrived, parked and started hiking in company of my dog Lucho.
Unfortunately I was following a track which at one point was totally blocked by several fallen trees and I couldn’t find a clear way to pass them and continue the hike up following that track.

After some minutes wandering around without being able to find a clear way up, I decided to give up, turned back and headed down to the car.

On my way down, I found a wide mountain dirt road which I had seen when I started my hike but decided not to take as I thought my way was the really good one, and a young man with his Little kid was coming down this dirt road. I asked him whether it would take me to the Summit and he said yes, so I immediately said thank you and started hiking up the dirt road.
After a neither too long not too steep hike, except for the very last part, we got to the trig point,

where I quickly installed the mobile GP antenna with 2 wire radials and started the activation:

First I called on 2m FM and 5 stations made it to the log, one of which was a French one and the other 4 were EA2.
When nobody else called in on 2m, I QSYed to 20m CW, where I worked 17 stations in 16 minutes, one of which was DX from USA East coast. Unfortunately OM1AX couldn’t make it to the log, as he called me, I copied him weak but OK, gave him signal report, but he never came back to me, so NIL…
When there were not more CW chasers, I QSYed to SSB and selfspotted on 14.285. 14 stations were logged in 14 minutes, one of which was DX from USA East coast.

The sun was getting low and the temperature was falling down so I soon started to feel a bit cold and decided to QRT before it got too dark for my descent of this unknown mountain.

Once down and again in Lekeitio, we finished this nice day with our friends, said thanks/goodbye to them and returned back home.

The activation made a total of 36 QSOs and I’m happy for this my first activation in EA2/BI…

Thanks to all the chasers. Thanks to Salvador EA2OX and KU6J for the spots.

Best 73 de Guru.

2 Likes