Hi all! yesterday I successfully activated one of the most famous and challenging mountains of the Lombard pre-Alps.
My XYL Eliana wanted to come on summit with me and this made me very happy.
As we were approaching the start of the trail by car, a wonderful deer (not common in our territory) crossed the street looking to us. It was amazing!
Then came the hard part: a 900m high trail which is very vertical, with an almost 10kg backpack (on a fat OM, let’s tell the truth).
Fortunately we had fresh air cooling us for all the climb.
As we reached the top, the view was beautyful, but I was only thinking about finding a good plase to raise my endfed antenna, worried by the 20 and so people that were reaching the top after us.
A few minutes later all was set up (ft817nd -EFHW for 20-10-40m and 3d printed cw paddle) and I called CQ.
The combination of an alert, RBN and RBNhole throwed me into a spiral of dits and dahs: the pile-up was served!
I felt like all Europe was pointing at me, the adrenaline was flowing, the mopuntains disappeared (and my XYL had some quiet rest).
One at the time, with some consistent effort (I’m not so good as a CW operator, as many of you have notced, but I never give up!) from me and from all the chasers (thank you for your activity and incredible patience).
One at the time, and after 20 minutes I reached 16 QSOs.
Germany, Spain, Czech Republic, Ireland, England, Holland, Poland, Italy and italian Sicily were logged.
It was yet time to leave: our daughters were waiting for us at the start of the trail with my parents.
So we packed everything up and went down. Going down the trail was still hard like climbing as the trail is quite unconfortable and “vertical”.
As we reached the wood where we started, a funny hare crossed our trail.
It was an incredible day of hiking and SOTA operating.
Even if my knees somehow disagree 
73 de IU2IJW
Martino