Hi folks, I’ll be heading up Mt. Rainier (4,392m) in Washington this weekend, thankfully with another ham this time! We hope to make the summit around midday on Saturday, June 16. With any luck the battery problems I’ve had with my FT-817 will be resolved and I’ll be able to run the full 5W on 20m and 40m. We’ll also be taking advantage of the prominence to try some VHF work into Seattle, Vancouver, and Portland (see projections below.) Depending on where we stand we may have decent coverage East of the mountain as well! If we have time we may step over to Liberty Cap (W7W/RS-002) to try and bag the first activation.
Unfortunately we got skunked on Rainier due to an aggressive thunderstorm that dropped hail, rain, and lightning on us. We weren’t the only ones to walk away without making the summit, nobody we talked to got to the top from the Emmons glacier either. Thanks to anyone who was looking for us, but once again the radio stayed in my pack. There’s always next time!
We made it to the summit of nearby Red Mountain (W7W/LC-036) but got hit by the same cell of thunderstorms that you did. We made a hasty retreat back down while lightning flashed literally all around us.
Bummer guys! We were listening for you over in EWA. We hit two summits Friday and 4 on Saturday - lightning and thunder was starting up just as we were heading down off our 4th summit. Driving back we were in some torrential rain almost the whole way to Snoqualmie Summit.