Motivation
Weather has been very hot making it hard to activate any SOTA in the last weeks.
Nevertheless I found a new one for me which offers dense vegetation on top and a good shade.
I went there with my friend Luis, EA2DPZ, on July 3rd 2026.
The climb
The route starts after Ripa, in the small village of Guendulain, where the road ends.
You can drive up the village to the last house, a farm warehouse.
Then you just follow the steep concrete path that soon ends and transform into a regular stony path.
- Trail length: 1,9 km (one way)
- Mount elevation: 804 m.
- Elevation gain from the parking: 230 m, an easy slope.
- Walking time to the summit: 40 minutes
Some precaution is required to locate the summit: some locals call this mountain as Guendulain, not Bordaburu.
Another trouble is that there is another summit called Bordaburu (not SOTA) in another area in Navarra. That can be confusing while planning the climb!
The trail is obvious and clear. For most of the trail there, there are no views at all as you’re surrounded by trees.
At half of the climb you reach a sharp turn right and see the summit is well covered by trees.
That’s the only spot of the trail that offers open views to the landscape.
A few minutes later we reached the summit. There is no indication at all, nor a mountain mailbox. You just feel you’re there by watching the path and terrain slope, which is quite flat anyway.
We just confirmed we were there by checking the GPS and the summit indicator in Sotlas webpage. This is how it looks like, not a regular mountaintop, but at least the shade was positive today:
The activation
We stayed in the trail to setup our antennas.
Luis ran on VHF FM. We put a Flower pot antenna just hanging from a tree. He wasn’t very lucky and had a single QSO, giving EA2EUS the Complete for this summit. Not a good radio coverage from this low height summit.
I laid the radio gear on ground and setup my 4 meter vertical fishpole, with the middle loading coil and the upper cap hat, plus 4 short radials.
I was happy that I brought the short vertical so that it was easy to put up between all the surrounding trees and bushes. In fact, I just held the fishpole over a crossing branch near the top of the pole: it kept the antenna in place. Doesn’t the hat resemble an UFO?
I ran in 14, 10 & 7 MHz, and was glad to log 28 QSO, including a number of S2S with @F4JUA, @HB9ELZ, @HB9DST, @F6HBI, @HB9DQM, @F5ODQ, and @EA2WX.
Tick alert
Despite there wasn’t any cattle in this area, I found two ticks had bitten me. Doh! I had long trousers and long socks over theis end, but they found their way in, nasty!
I rang Luis, and he self inspected to find another tick in his chest.
They all were removed with no bad effect, but it’s becoming frequent to had such experience every now and then. I hate it!
Thanks all for the QSO and see you soon.
73 Ignacio (and Luis)