Weather forecast was warning about temperatures drop and lower atmosferic pressure this weekend, which meant chances for rain and even snow at higher altitudes.
However, I raised an alert last night for my Saturday morning activation of Mt. San Cristóbal, which I would only cancel in case of rain.
It wasn’t the case, fortunately, although all the mountains around our QTH were covered by snow.
I started the hike by 10h10 utc after having dropped my daughters at the rock climbing training place, as usual.
As soon as I had covered a few tens of meters, I found some patches of snow on the ground, which became more and more as I kept hiking up.
This is a picture taken when I was nearly arriving to the Summit.
The Summit was foggy when I got there, so no panoramic views at all today.
This is the summit’s mountaneers mailbox
After these few pictures I started CQing on 145.525 FM and immediately got calls from Santi - EA2BSB and Manuel - EA2DT followed by Julian - EA2BVX. Then I got a few more unresponded CQ calls, so I decided to raise a selfspot on Sotawatch. Antonio - EA2BIN came back to me and finally it was Ignacio - EA2BD, whose voice sounded pretty much normal after his severe throut cold and illness last weekend. Glad to hear you fully recovered, Ignacio!
Some more unreplayed CQ calls and I went QRT, as it was time for me to descent.
I took these two pictures on my descent.
Once in the car and after having picked my daughters up from the rock climbing place, I took this picture of the snowed Summit.
Very few minutes later, it looked like the fog finally cleared and we will have some nice sunshine before the temperatures drop even more and we get more snow tomorrow.
In this activation I logged just 5 QSOs in 8 minutes. It was a real express one.
Thanks to the chasers for your calls and I’ll be looking forward to many more QSOs in the future.
This was the first mountain I’ve hiked after having got 50 years of age last Sunday… and there will be many more to come, I hope.
Best 73 de Guru - EA2IF