Pendle Hill report 14/02/2010

Old Reflector
1

Pendle hill report SP-005
14/02/2010

Having not activated much since December it was high time i got my act together. A phone call to Stuart G0MJG confirmed he was ok for Sunday. Neither of us was feeling particularly fit so a short run was chosen and Pendle hill the target.

We have done this summit many times and usually ascend via the steep step short route. This time we opted for a longer walk in to make it more interesting and get more exercise. The start route was to be from Nick of Pendle and a three mile (there abouts) walk. I last ascended via this route over twenty years ago.

Stuart arrived at my qth and the journey uneventful apart from low mist and shallow fog. The path up was semi frozen and reasonable walking. Just under a mile later we arrived at a junction in the path at Badger wells hill. Complacency and not checking the map we veered off to the right and followed the path to the right thinking the summit was over to our right. It soon became apparent we were off course. In order to regain the path we had to circum-navigate along the Ogden clough valley this was a sapping strength bog/tuft walk.

Once the correct path was regained and lesson learned always check your map we continued to ascend up what was becoming a black soup of mud along the path. Eventually this became a paved walk way to arrive out at the trig point.
Avoiding the many throngs of visitors that were arriving we re-treated to the west by about 100yds and set up our base of operations with Stuart on 5megs and myself on 2m ssb. Summit conditions were quite good with the sky becoming increasingly overcast and a light breeze cold enough still to have many layers on. Stuart reported 5megs in good shape and with 2m reasonable we operated for a good hour. Best dx was a struggled contact with the two London chasers G6XLL, and G2BOF but the contacts were good.

Moving to 23cm a line of sight problem to Mike G4BLH was overcome by a wander across to the trig point where we became 5/9 both ways. Similarly a surprised John MW1FGQ was worked at 5/9 and was called by a station in Manchester G0NAG (i think that was the call as i didn’t write it at the time)

Time and cold had now taken over and we decided to clear off sporting my new aldi snowboard gloves which were very warm well worth the £5 or £6 quid i paid for them. Snowflakes were falling as we descended back to the car.
Conclusion the walk was well worth the exercise contacts were good and a nicer opener for 2010.

Many thanks to all stations worked.

Best rgds Keith G0OXV and Stuart G0MJG.

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In reply to G0OXV-2:

Very nice to work you last Sunday Keith, I spoke too soon in the video I made when I activated Pendle Hill the weekend before when I said you would struggle to get lost up there :wink:

To be fair I was referring to the route to the summit from the Barley side. In my younger days I too took the route up from the Nick of Pendle & ended up having to make a detour, with bicycle, to reach the summit.

Could the Manchester station have been John G0NAJ? I know he is a keen VHF/UHF operator but don’t know if he has 23cms capability.

Thanks & 73,

Mark G0VOF

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In reply to G0OXV-2:

Regarding “getting lost” on Pendle Hill, the following item appeared in the printed edition of the Lancashire Telegraph on 27th February.

I will not quite the entire article, but here are the most relevant parts:

"Five women had to be rescued by police after becoming lost walking on Pendle Hill.

A woman contacted police to say she, and four friends, had got lost in the snow. A major search & rescue operation was launched using the force helicopter and a thermal imaging camera.

The women were spotted near a wall on Ogden Clough,at the top of Pendle Hill, at around 5PM last Sunday. (That would make it the 21st February - G0VOF)

Police said that the women aged between 14 and 22 were extremely cold and one had fallen in water.

All five were airlifted to a farm near Worston, where they were treated by paramedics. They were all showing early signs of hypothermia. Police have warned walkers to make sure they are well prepared and fully equiped."

So from this, it is clear that you CAN get lost on Pendle Hill, despite what I said in my video the week before you activated the Hill, & two weeks before these five women had to be rescued!

Of course, you were well equiped & prepared for the conditions, as was I the week before, but obviously these five women were not.

I do tend to make at least one mistake in all my SOTA videos, it is now clear that stating:

“I think, that unless you were totally clueless,you’d struggle to get lost up here” wasd the mistake in this one!

Thankfully nobody was injured, & it goes to show that a summit that I as a local may well see as easy to navigate over, can lead the unwary into dangerous situations.

Of course, with Pendle Hill being a very popular hill for a nice afternoon stroll, these sort of incidents are sadly quite common, especially around Halloween.

My famous last words about not being able to get lost are about 1:29 into this video:

73,

Mark G0VOF

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In reply to G0VOF:
Hi Mark,

Yes it is very easy to do daft things not so easy to undo, Actually we were never lost just took the wrong path, Complacency and following a throng of people misled us. Knmowing we were heading in the wrong direction made us check the map in the end.

however the wide summit plataeu could mislead people when shrouded in cloud so can understand people getting lost up there. Just goes to show you can never take anything for granted.
as for preperation we were carrying gps compass etc but were never used as we knew where we were just not where we should have been… if you see what i mean hi.
tks for the read.
73,s k.