I will be spending Christmas in Tenerife again this year. As this will be my third Christmas in Tenerife, I thought it was about time I tackled the main summit, El Teide: EA8/TF-001. Having looked through the wealth of information now available on the SOTLAS summit page (thank you Joe), I found out that it is possible to bivouac at the summit provided you get a special permit. Combined with 2 other permits, one for the evening of the 31st from 18:00 till 22:00 and one for the morning of the 1st of Jan from 06:00 till 09:00, this will allow me to activate both New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day from the highest mountain in Spain. Needless to say, I’ll be packing some warm clothes and a good sleeping bag. At just about the peak of Cycle 25, I’m hoping for some good contacts and hopefully, no massive geomagnetic storm.
Of course I will be doing many other activations all over Tenerife from 21st of December to 5th of January. I have hired a motorbike again for a few days to get around on and have some fun.
73 de OE6FEG
Matt
Sounds like a fine adventure Matt. Will follow up how things will turn out for you.
The status page linked at the summit page should show if the roads are open. In winter time it can snow enough that the road are closed.
There are signs and gates at the entry points.
Chasing will likely not happen with my non to minimal cw skills 
The locals would be happy for some 2m FM contacts for sure 
73 Joe
Good luck Matt,
we had an 18:00 to 22:00 sunset permit booked for the peak last week, but when we arrived the tele cabin was not running and all of the access walks were closed after 16:00 hours. If the tele cabin is still closed an off road motorbike might be rather useful; just joking, the national park has a €600 fine?!!!
The closure followed a rescue of 130 people the week before when there should only have been 50 people up there;
Of course we have not been able to book further places to try to ascend and activate the mountain, which on balance might be a good outcome!
Please take care, the summit is 3715 meters and had snow last week, not a good height to endure a cold night if you are not acclimatised.
73
Thanks for the s2s from EA8/TF-012 to GM/SS-219 today Colwyn.
I only had very cold conditions but no snow on that hill, some of the hills surrounding it had snow though.
Andy
MM7MOX
Thanks Andy,
yes, excellent to get our summit-2-summit contact back to near Edinburgh, Peebles. I think it was slightly warmer on EA8/TF-012 yesterday. Gerald (EA8/M0WNL/P) and I were in t-shirts on the summit. Not looking forward to returning home to the cold next week!
73
That’s all you need to chase a SOTA activation! In fact it’s all you need to activate on CW (as I gleefully discovered back in 2007 when I had the bare-faced cheek to do my debut CW activation on 7.032MHz at 10wpm!!!). SOTA is surely the best training programme for learning (basic) CW!
Anyway, very good luck with the expedition Matt. You’re halfway there with all the permits in place, but you will still be nervously checking the weather forecasts, summit and access road status webpages in the days beforehand!
I remember when I activated El Teide back in 2015 - it was April, but even so, it was all closed due to snow until the day before our permit booking. So I do hope you have the good luck with access.
Thanks Tom,
yes indeed, whilst I have plenty of cold weather gear and high alpine experience, I will still be looking for clear skies and relatively light winds aloft. I have no desire to wake up under a snow drift.
I will be using my QMX (60-15) for this trip. I’ve got it working nicely with an ATU 10 off Ali Express. I have found the higher bands work better in the Canary Islands. Sorry, no FM, I use my Garmin InReach for spotting when on holiday, so no real need for an HT.
QRS are always welcome to chase. I will try to tie a knot in my hanky and come down to 15 wpm once the pile up is finished. As long as I get your call and an RST, you will go in the log. My worry is that I myself am now a bit rusty; I haven’t activated since September. I have concentrated much more on paragliding this year, but I still get frustrated at missing out on SOTA. Hopefully I can get out this weekend and get back into the swing of things.
73 de OE6FEG/M0FEU
Matt
Good job I dusted off the paddle last Saturday and went up the Patschaberg, OE/ST-363. It turned out my Bluetooth keyboard had begun to malfunction. I’m getting about 4 years out of these foldable mini-keyboards until they succumb to humidity, and general wear and tear; not bad I suppose. On the other hand, my new ATU 10 worked very well with the QMX. I’m taking so much gear (motorcycle clothing & helmet, SOTA gear, paragliding gear, stove & bivvy gear), I had to book some extra luggage. However, it will be nice to have some spare equipment if something goes wrong.
73 de OE6FEG
Matt