Another milestone today for Manuel HB9DQM. A trip to summit Poncione Rosso, HB/TI-081, a gem on a ridge line between two main valleys in our sunshine paradise Ticino, yet another first activation, has brought a 5th SOTA Mountain Goat to his herd. Congrats on this success, Manuel!
A set of pictures taken from Manuel’s Sotlas photo album – dreams of pebble, gravel and rock!
It looks like you learn to really enjoy all sorts of pebble, gravel and rock when you hike and climb at Manuel’s ambition level. At one time you learn to find your individual trails, at another time you develop eyes on your hands and feet, and somewhen you learn to do it with heart and soul.
We meet loose gravel more and more on our ways to the summits. This situation is a reflection of the changing environment. Convenient trails are not accessible any longer and more frequent rock or ice falls put our hikes at risk. So foresight and caution are key factors on alpine tours today.
Enjoy your further adventures below the sunshine, Manuel, and we enjoy that SOTA lets us share this with you on the radio!
Congratulations Manuel!
5000 points mostly in an alpine association is a huge achviement, not to forget the large number of unique summits and first activations.
Thank you very much, Markus @HB9DIZ, Michael @DB7MM, Jimmy @M0HGY, Jarek @SP9MA and all the others, including of course my regular (+ S2S) chasers! I’m still not tired of SOTA, and there’s still so much I want to do
Yes, our alps are crumbling away, as mountains are destined to do – it just happens a bit faster than it used to. So it’s better to make friends with the scree, unless one only wants to visit grass-covered summits or activate in winter – but that has its own challenges as well.
Although there was no scree involved, yesterday’s activation had to be earned (like most of the remaining first activations in HB/TI). The grand total was 2400 m of ascent, 2700 m of descent, and a length of 22 km. My route took me from Valle Verzasca to Valle Riviera, with Poncione Rosso in the middle. While the northern part of Switzerland got its first sprinkling of snow this week, I got to play in the interesting rock slabs in a T-shirt on the southern side of the summit. The photos are on SOTLAS, I’ll just let the following one sum it up:
Congratulation on your 5th goat Manuel ! I can rarely do the same mountains you climb but it is always a pleasure to see the pictures of your activations and to hear the story behind it.
Exactly this type of terrain we hadn’t practiced in the “Jugend+Sport” course “Mountaineering” in the 1960s, but we did extensively practice survival and rescue from crevasses - because the glaciers were still very widespread and large at that time. You know what I mean by that - unfortunately it cannot be reversed so quickly.
To be more precise, before 1972 this was called military pre-training…
This term was “demilitarized” in 1972 and from then on it was called “Jugend+Sport”.
So I attended these courses under both names - the one after 1972 was still the course for instructors J+S.
Manuel, congratulations to this extraordinary achievement!
And - I know I repeat myself - thank you once more for your great software with its great UI. I sometimes use sotl.as just to have a look at a geographic location
What a fantastic summit! Congratulations on your 5th goat. It was really nice to visit Ticino for the first time this year, even if it was blistering hot.
73 de OE6FEG
Matt
Good evening Manuel @HB9DQM. Congratulations from me on reaching this milestone A remarkable achievement with a nice statistic. You have already visited many summits around the globe. Continue to have fun with your hobby.
Congrats, Manuel
5 x MG with this many unique, alpine and first activations is a fantastic achievement!
Also the high number of QSOs (in average more than 30 per activation) speaks for itself!
Thanks for the many S2S-QSOs and hope for many more!
Herzliche Gratulation auch von uns zur 5.Berggeiss
Und vielen Dank auch für die schönen S2S im vergangenen Sommer und die vielen guten Anregungen, die Du uns auch immer wieder mit Deinen Touren gibst
hurray 
with such a challening climb.
A remarkable achievement with a nice statistic. You have already visited many summits around the globe. Continue to have fun with your hobby.
