Motivation
EA2LU Jorge and I decided to visit a new summit that we had never visited before. That the summit had only been activated once back in 2014.
Activation date: May 6th 2021
Climb
The nearest village is Izal, 75 far away from Pamplona.
About 500 m before Izal, there is a deviation where the hike starts.
It follows a dirt road that goes up to the summit as there is a big hermitage on top.
- Track length: 2,4 km
- Summit elevation: 1039 m
- Height gain: about 330 m.
This is the profile:
Activation
The highest point, where the mountain mailbox is placed, is an area fully covered with trees and boxwood plants, too bad to deploy a wire antenna.
Therefore moved around to find two separated spots for our antennas.
- EA2LU station: KX2 and random wire 14m plus 4 short radials.
Jorge ran on 5, 7, 10 and 14 MHz, CW and he also did some S2S (some on SSB) on 21 and 28 MHz!.
He logged 76 qso, including S2S with HB9CYV, I1WKN, DL6CGA, EA2GM, SV2OXS, IW2OBX, HB9AFI, HB9BIN, 9A6CW, DL3TU, IK2LEY, OE5EEP, SP9MA, S53AAN, DL6FBK, F4ICE, HB15SOTA, and LA9XGA: quite a lot!
This way Jorge passed the 1000 S2S points today, well done!
- EA2BD station: LNR LD-5 and EFHW antenna.
I ran on 14 and 7 MHz SSB mainly. I also chased on 10 MHz CW for S2S.
My log was closed with 30 qso including S2S with some of the ones Jorge logged, and added SV1RVJ, EC7ZT (in 20 m to my surprise!) and EA2CCG.
While tuning to chase some of the S2S, I met with some of the other /P stations trying also to get S2S, I felt it was an intense S2S flow today, working in a row!
Tip of the day
At the end of the activation we decided to pay a short visit to the hermitage that is located at the end of the ridge, opposite to the summit.
This biulding is quite big and provides a distinctive shape to this mountain. This is how it looks while approaching, and the village of Izal at his foot:
The hermitage was built between XVI and XVII centuries and is in very good condition.
Its impressive bell can be played by mountaineers.
The hermitage is in a beautiful area, free from trees and provides an excellent lookout of the Pyrenees, close at sight.
We identified some of the massive summits in front of us. Amazing the number of SOTA summits at sight:
Perhaps we can visit some of them in the future?
73 de Ignacio