With the Christmas break, the rain first, the fog, the cold I got, the low temperatures and some snow later too, I had not hiked Mt. San Cristóbal since last December 10th and I had lost some of my fitness.
In a cold morning, with 0 degrees C, I started the hike in company of my dog Lucho by 10h09 utc. One month and a half not doing this great exercise together with the food, drinks and sweets eaten during the Christmas season was enough to make me feel this hike tougher than usual.
It took me 37 minutes to get to the summit (2 minutes longer than usual)
I only found some few patches of snow during the second half of the hike and the ground was very, very wet after so much rain and even some snow we’ve got over the last days.
Once at the summit, I found that the wooden post where I used to attach my antenna to had been removed, so I had to improvise a new antenna set up attaching the blue PVC plastic tube to another wooden post not far from the missing one.
Problem is that the removed post had some special and very convenient features for me to easy and quickly attach the plastic tube to it with the help of a single bungy.
Today, I had to struggle a bit, but I finally managed to attach the tube to the wooden post with the help of that same single bungy.
The second problem I faced was with the wire radial. After so many activations from the same place I had already prepared the exact length of the wire radial plus an extension cord in order to have it hanging at the right angle and quickly tie the cord end to a metal thing located at the right distance from my antenna towards the North. Today, I had to improvise and have the wire radial tied to another wooden post towards the North, but the distance was not the same and it took me longer than usual getting the wire radial correctly extended with the right angle.
This new and slightly different set-up produced a different SWR measurement and it took me a little while to find a new ATU setting in order to minimize SWR.
With all these minor inconveniences, I sent a selfspot and I logged the first QSO at 11h00 utc, despite having arrived to the summit by 10h46.
There was just a woman at the summit when I got there and she quickly left while I was setting up, so I decided to work SSB today because I think I had not done so over some of my last activations here.
The selfspot seemed to work fine and I immediately had a good number of chasers calling.
This is the log of today’s activation:
The sky was blue and the views were beautiful with the top of all the nearby mountains covered with snow. Unfortunately, I forgot to take any pictures today.
Well, thanks dear chasers for your calls and QSOs.
I’ll be looking forward to copying you again soon from this or any other summit.
Best 73,
Guru