SOTA Summits Along the Blue Ridge Parkway

Has anybody made a listing of drive-up and short hike summits along the Blue Ridge Parkway through North Carolina and Virginia? My wife is not a radio operator and is not interested in SOTA, but we both enjoy the scenic drive along the Blue Ridge Parkway. I certainly could interest her in a spring trip along the parkway, even though I would be doing SOTA activations along the way. :slight_smile: Is there a way to use the SOTA Map website to plot a path along the BRP? de AE9Q

You can use the Range feature to accomplish that. I’ve done W4C/EM-058 and can confirm it’d be XYL friendly, as it is at the lookout for MT Jefferson.

David,

Yes, SOTAmaps has a powerful Road Route tool to identify SOTA summits within a defined corridor along a road route. Got to the SOTAmapping website then choose Mapping>Range Mapping from the drop down menus. Click on the Road Route button, identify your start/end cities and the corridor width. Then choose between various road routes and click on map. You can then download the Chosen Summits Listing. Very powerful planning tool!

Good luck on your trip! Guy/n7un

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Thanks for the replies. It looks like I will need to do little chunks at a time as the Route button will take me on the Interstate otherwise. Good tool, though. AE9Q

I don’t know how far north you plan to travel. There are several short hikes from Skyline Drive in Shenandoah National park plus a drive up or two.

Way down south though not near the Blue Ridge Parkway one to consider would be White Top, W4V/WV-002. It’s a drive up worth 10 points and the view is fantastic.

I’d say check with some of the W4V/W4C activators. I’m sure they all have some good first hand knowledge.

Chuck K4Q

Just a short note to say I’m currently working on a solution to this, and similar, problems where Google Maps (GM) suggests that a road route should take major roads or highways instead of more scenic roads like the Blue Ridge Parkway. Of course GM does this as default to ensure shortest/cheapest route(s) between two points.

The solution should be available in the range page of SOTAMaps in a couple of days.

Rob

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My wife and I visited Shenandoah NP many years ago and I think it would be a great place to visit again. I’ve started listing the oft-activated sites there and will cull the list of 14 summits down to the ones that have short hikes to them. Thanks for the suggestion! PS: Thanks for the S2S today! Dave, AE9Q

A couple of my SOTA buddies told me about a mapping website that was set up for the SOTA activators who were also doing the NPOTA (National Parks on the Air) program in 2016. By looking at the Blue Ridge Parkway, all of the summits in the NP are shown. Nearby summits not in the NP are not shown, but at least this is a good tool that partially helps. Not sure how long it will be up, now that NPOTA is over, though. The website is: NPOTA+SOTA MAP de AE9Q