Once upon a time I had the great pleasure to meet HB9SOTA Friends during their long SOTA trip around Europe.
It was not a complete coincidence, I took care of it myself to drive to meet them and so we spent some interesting activation days with Juerg @HB9BIN, Paul @HB9DST and Dano @OM6AN.
It was in September 2017.
Our stay in Slovakia was not accompanied by particularly good WX.
Activations we managed to do despite of rainy days.
However, WX was not the most important thing there, our meeting and joint activations were a beautiful adventure, and then a huge surprise and pleasure to receive an invitation from Paul @HB9DST to visit Switzerland.
COVID pandemic delayed all this a bit, but finally me and my XYL spent a few unique days in Switzerland.
Many thanks to Paul @HB9DST, for his invitation, hospitality and beautiful list of summits recommendations as well as activations together.
On Tuesday August 17th forecast was not so promising but during the day it became better and we did activate two summits.
Below our start to ascent of Regitzer Spitz HB/GR-121:
Many thanks to Eva @HB9FPM who despite of hard activation work on HB/BE-042 along with HB9 team headed by Juerg @HB9BIN on the days before found the power to support us in activation of Pilatus/ Tomlishorn HB/NW-011 on Friday August 20:
Switzerland is really a great, great SOTA land, but also great for many reason.
It was obvious you enjoyed the time and I hope you will get a chance to return to Switzerland.
First, I want to say what a wonderful time I had hosting Jarek SP9MA and his charming XYL Svetlana for several days. They’re such fun people and were so flexible and easy to have as guests. And it was great to be able to return the favor for all the time Jarek spent when I was traveling through Slovakia – local knowledge is so very valuable!!
In coming up with suitable ideas for activations during their visit, I had to keep two main things in mind. First of course was the weather. There are some summits here in HB9 you simply don’t consider when it is wet and raining. So I was working on a list of “good weather summits” and “rainy day summits.” On our first day of hikes it was raining when we got in the car and drove towards our target area, so I optioned for some safer yet interesting hikes; by the afternoon we had partly sunny skies. On the second day when we got to the parking lot at the trialhead it was still drizzling, but it soon stopped and the rest of the day turned out to be fine and the Fuerstensteig trail in HB0 was dry enough we had no worries. The third day there was some possibility of rain, but we had none – but we also sat in clouds/fog most of the day and didn’t get a very good view of the visually impressive Churfirsten range. Even so, I think they got a good sampling of what we have here to offer and had some interesting experiences.
A second matter considers the abilities of your hiking partners. I have been on activations with Jarek before and I’ve also seen his reports from activations elsewhere, so I know he is quite capable. But I had no info about his XYL. When I asked him if she liked hiking and if she would be joining us on the activations, he informed me that when she’s not teaching at a technical school, she works as a mountain guide in Poland!!! These days she’s not on mountains every day but is president of the national guide organization and arranges guides for groups coming into all of Poland. Obviously I needn’t have any worries about what she could handle! In fact, one hiking buddy of mine here in Switzerland told me that the suggestions I made were almost an insult for such an accomplished couple! Yet although our hikes were technically not difficult and probably not much a serious challenge for either of them, she enjoyed them quite a lot. “Every mountain has its own special charms” she said time and again, she was quite content simply being outdoors.
What interesting people! Here I must add that I learned a great deal about dogs – after all, Jarek’s Gordon Setter “Alex” was at one point the European Champion show dog! So it was special fun when we took my neighbors’ French Spitz “Hera” along on our last day of hikes. Of course, Jarek and Svetlana made friends with Hera immediately and are now buddies for life.
I hope I can host Jarek and Svetlana again when we have some great weather and perhaps even enlist the aid of some HB9SOTA members with far greater experience than mine to take them on some activations that will give them a true adrenaline rush!
