I made plans to go to Mt. Beriain with my Elder broder but, when I had sat to have my breakfast at about 7AM, I saw a message from him on my phone saying it was raining in Pamplona and he was not coming. I looked out my window and realised it was raining a Little bit too in my QTH. Sometimes it may rain in Pamplona and not in my QTH which is only 20Km to the South and it’s due to the SOTA Mt. Erreniega (EA2/NV-092) located in between and acting many times as a clouds stopper.
However, it wasn’t the case today and I initially decided to abort my activation of Mt. Beriain.
But SOTA fever is hard to tackle and after 30-40 minutes I looked again out the window and saw that it looked like no more rain was pouring, so I grabbed my rucksack, put my dog Lucho in the car and left.
I had a 60Km drive to the small village of Unanua and just the first 15Km were on a highway. The rest of the drive was mountain road through the Col of Lizarraga.
I arrived to the village of Unanua and then headed to the highest part, where I found this weirdly decorated property:
Leaving it on my left, I continued driving through the dirt road which started right at that point and I did it for about 2 or 3 Km, where I saw a sign indicating that the mountaneering path to Mt. Beriain started there.
The hike started pretty steep. After a short time I looked back in order to see the foggy views and my car location. This was the view:
The ascent was nice and the path very clearly marked:
With the fog, the beech trees forest looked like an enchanted one…
The ascent became very, very steep and I have now realised that I didn’t take any pictures of that section.
It’s such steep, with so many loosen rocks that a lot of care and concentration is necessary if one wants to avoid falling down, particularly on a foggy day like today, where everything was very wet and slippery.
Ignacio (EA2BD) and Iñaki (EB2GKK) both recommended me to do the hiking with 2 walking sticks, so I brought them with me for the first time today, as I usually go with just one.
The advise was indeed necessary, as they were very helpful during the ascent and much more on the descent.
At this point we were almost getting to the top of this long summit,
but we were reaching it at the left side of it, so we had to walk to the right until finding the hermitage and the trig point.
Visibility was very short and I was unable to see the hermitage and the trig point. I even thought at one point this cairn was the Summit:
A little further and slightly higher I saw this other one and I believed it was the Summit because there was not more visible land further ahead and I thought this was the highest point of the mountain:
I set up my gear right here with no wind and no rain, but as soon as I finished installation and when I was just about to make my first CQ call on 2m, it started to rain 
My notebook got wet and I was unable to write anything down on it, so I decided to record my activation with my Smartphone. I only made 1 QSO on 2m FM, I also called EA2OX/P for a S2S QSO on that same band/mode but he didn’t copy me. Since I was in a rush to qualify the activation and descend because it was raining and I was getting wet, I QSYed to 20m SSB. Thanks to a small umbrella I brought with me, I could provide some shelter to my FT-817 (not to me) during the rain fall. On 20m SSB I managed to complete 33 QSOs. All of them within Europe.
When the pile up vanished I QSYed to 40m in order to give a chance to my EA SOTA chaser mates, but I tuned the antenna on 7.118 and as soon as I was about to start calling CQ SOTA, the rain got heavier and the wind started to blow stronger, thus causing me troubles to hold the umbrella in place, hold the microphone, hold and check the recorder of my Smartphone… a bit too much to hold under the rain, so I immediately decided to switch the rig off and start packing everything.
By the time I had packed everything and I was standing and ready to leave, the fog partly cleared a Little bit for a while, letting me see the hermitage, which was pretty close to where I was, so I decided to go and pay a short visit to this nice construction made to the memory of Saint Donato.
A bit further after the hermitage, I found the mountaneers mailbox and the trig point.
This was the end of my first visit ever to this impressive mountain.
Since I had stored a GPS waypoint at where I had reached the top of this long Summit, I had no troubles to find the right point to start my descent. However, the first part of it was very steep and it was extremely tricky with so much humidity. This picture can give you an idea.
On my descent I slipped twice and my bottom would have landed on ground/rock unless my hands hadn’t gone quickly on ground and stopped my falling.
Later, exactly at this point where I took the following picture, I completely fell down with a rolling turn of me on ground. It was fortunately grass and I didn’t get muddy 
You can see those 3 Little villages down in the valley and the Sierra de Andía in front with the clouds on its top.
Now I want to show you this interesting view of the mountain from its base at the village of Unanua:
It looks indeed like a different mountain.
On my drive home, when I was on the road up to pass Col of Lizarraga, I stopped to take this last picture of today’s SOTA Mt. Beriain:
Thanks to all chasers, spotters and friends, particularly Roberto - EA2DXY, who wrote the activation down on a paper and sent it to me by e-mail, which let me double check everything I had recorder in my Smartphone.
Hope to copy you all again soon.
Best 73 de Guru - EA2IF