The normal route to the summit would be to take the excellent road but that leads to a Spanish Military RADAR site and is gated and closed. There are alternative routes to almost the summit. Unfortunately the entire activation zone is within the RADAR compound and is off-limits.
There have been some activations of this summit from the trig point and at first glance it is high enough to be in the AZ, summit height is 1436m and the trig is at 1415m giving a difference which is 21m and looks to be within the AZ. Unfortunately, the col is at 1406 which means the trig is not within the AZ. It’s marked on the maps available but is easy to overlook.
Here is an annotated map showing how the AZ and the RADAR station within it and without careful study it would be easy to assume operating from the trig is valid.
I’m sorry to say but this means that all the activations of this beautiful looking summit are invalid and hence so are all the chases. If you have this summit in your activation or chase log then please remove it.
I don’t know whether you can get permission from the authorities to gain access to the AZ but without permission or until the RADAR station is closed it will not be possible to activate this.
The SOTA database contains all summits that comply with SOTA rules but that does not mean access is available. There are plenty of military bases on summits which means you really are not welcome. The summits are listed because the limits on access can and do change. A good example being Mt. Umunhum W6/CC-052 which used to be the location of Almaden Air Force Station and was the location of a massive RADAR used during the Cold War. After it closed in 1980, the site was closed to public access due to decaying unsafe buildings and significant contaminated land and materials. It was reopened in 2018 after a 9 year clean up operation to remove the contamination.
Asking people to delete chases and activations which were made in good faith is never easy and is not something we like doing, there are no winners here but it has to be done.
Final reminder, please delete any chases you have of EA6/MA-001. It does not appear to be possible to get into the AZ at present so all the activations so far are not valid.
If you haven’t deleted the chase/S2S from your logs then I will delete them in the next few days.
Just in case anybody has, in the past, relied on these deleted activations to claim a Chaser award you can be assured your claim will remain valid - I will not be reviewing completed Award claims.
Any claims after 23 August 2020 that rely on these activations will not be approved.
I have just deleted 4 activations and 68 chases of this summit as it is not possible for the activator to be in the AZ due to the fence around the military installation.
Visual perspective is of course tricky on a frankly awful handheld video… but it looks like some of these cyclists seen in the video have got above the final hairpin. Looking at the map that surely puts them inside the AZ?
I don’t know where the locked gate is on a normal day, but maybe there is a cycling “hill climb” event that get access to the true summit?
Edit:
Found this…. looks like there is a way up the road which seems to have only become available in the last few years. I’m guessing the video above was taken on a recent running of this event. Whether you do it by bike, or maybe you piggy back on the event somehow, it does seem there is a chink of light for activation?
Edit2: Unconfirmed date for 2026 running is 28th April.
Before “Kill the Hill”, there had also been another event called “La Bola del Puig Major”, which seemed like a slightly more local and less glitzy event doing the same thing. I’m not sure if there were any rules about sticking a 2m handy in your jersey pocket and pretending you were doing team radio at La Vuelta…
