Winter Bonus period is not yet over in EA2 and I’m just now planning to sum up 6+3+6+3 = 18 activator points tomorrow.
The two 6 pointers I’m willing to activate tomorrow (weather permitting) are Mt. Saioa EA2/NV-021 and Mt. Zuriain EA2/NV-023.
This will be the GPS track to follow:
It wiil be very cloudy with some, hopefully light, rain showers, but I hope to be able to make it and take some good pictures of the nice landscape.
I’ll have to leave the 4 pointer Larrakarte EA2/NV-173 because I won’t have time nor legs to hike that one after the 2 previous 6 pointers.
An excellent thread Colin. Some nice photos as well.
Due to work commitments, for several years now Paul G4MD and I have been restricted to just two outings in the winter bonus period. We refer to these as the Post Christmas Bimble, as it is sandwiched in between Christmas and the New Year, and the Birthday Bash which is similarly timed between our birthdays on 22nd and 28th of February. The December outing has often been disrupted and the weather kept us off the hills one day at the end of last year. By contrast the February outing usually runs quite smoothly, though temperatures down to minus 4C coupled with 40 mph winds did challenge us last month. This winter we actually managed to accrue 33 points which were most welcome as we are both now starting to get an interest in double goatdom. It has taken a long time to regain the interest in points which seemed to evaporate after the magic 1000 were achieved. I wonder whether others have experienced this.
Just a glimpse at our winter holidays in February 2018 in Eastern Allgäu, Southern Germany. We had roughly 2 hours of sunshine in that week, and this only by taking a chair lift to be above the fog.
Best story was visiting Edelsberg, DL/AL-161, being for the third time on snowshoes, in the fog at -10 °C – just see below.
This winter bonus was well deserved in my opinion, hi. And we decided to come back once in the warm period of the year to see the beauty of this place at better sight - unfortunately without bonus points then, hi!
I did quite a few activations during the current bonus season. And took a lot of photos, of course. Still, I could not find any of the photos of me, doing my usual activator’s stuff, very inspiring and interesting. And worthy of publishing at this respected and highly-selective site
Therefore, I turn to the Heavens above us, which never fail to surprise and astonish us. Here are some examples of what I’ve found over there…
The Skies Above Sarajevo (the whole City of Sarajevo is just a small white spot in the middle of the picture) / Taken on March 15th, 2018 / Expedition to E7/BO-011 and E7/BO-013
With a temperature of +1 deg.C at the start point of my hike and graupeling, I decided to abandon after having hiked about 100m vertical under graupel and finding the summit I was heading to completely inmersed in cloud.
Perhaps, I would have been able to get to the summit and carry out a quick activation in the fog under graupel but this wouldn’t have been a pleasant activation and I decided to give up.
There will be a future chance for sure.
73,
I’m not very well travelled but I did have a trip to Austria with the Scouts in summer 1990, I was 11 at the time. We climbed some mountains, I think the name was Lechtal Alps, I get the feeling that they’re in the same general geographical area, just over the border. In any case, the terrain looks very similar. We were definitely very near the German border as I can remember going to an open air swimming pool in Germany one day
As it was summer time, the mountains didn’t have snow and I remember that one of the slopes had a dry toboggan course. Unfortunately I crashed my toboggan (no fault of my own) and I grazed my left elbow severely. I still have the scar to this day! I have fond memories of the trip despite my injury.
After todays activations being cancelled due to bad WX, I’ve lost my last good chance to grab 6 winter bonus points. I may try it again tomorrow, but the WX forecast is even worse, so it’s going to be very, very unlikely.
At least, let me show you a few pics I took during my short time in the mountains this morning.
That’s the kind of weather we get here in Scotland in the middle of May! I was hiking over a few summits and camped overnight on Shalloch on Minnoch GM/SS-048 last May and awoke at 5.30am to everything being frozen solid and my bottle of water was just an bottle of solid ice. Not cold enough to freeze the peat bogs though!
Managed 57 winter bonus points so far this season. Should have been 60 points but failed to raise a 4th contact on boxing day 26th December 2017, GM/WS-292 (Ben Shieldaig). Short day plus the late start didn’t help!
Best day, so far, was on 4th February 2018 when we skied over to GM/ES-005 (Beinn Mheadhoin).
Have just arrived in Switzerland so potential for a few more bonus points by end of March.