Not quite exactly your criteria, but I was eyeing up Ardverikie wall last week when we were over that way. It’s one of the best rock climbs I’ve ever done and it leads to the summit of Binnein Shios GM/WS-239
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Great suggestion though! Looks great. Dave MacLeod has a nice video on the route - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Yiby2Lvpyo.
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In addition to points, I keep track of miles hiked and elevation gained from the start just as a cool way to watch these stats grow. My goal is to continue to break my 2019 SOTA season of 62 summits, 367 points, 207 miles hiked, and 50,275 feet (15,323 meters). I exceeded all of those stats in 2020 when I had goat fever with 104 summits, but this year, one objective was to work on more unique summits and take my time. In 2021, I’ve already exceeded my 2019 stats and having a great time. I’m still working on my goals for 2022 but I think it will include expanding my association count. I’ve also checked off a couple of other firsts, my first radio and custom antenna build for SOTA. The QCX Mini is awesome!
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Wow, that will be great!. Power to both of you on your quests.
David N6AN
Done, yesterday 
Thanks Mikel EA2CW
73, Éric
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For a few years I made a long list of personal challenges for the year. After covid hitting it pretty well went by the wayside… Here was my 2020 goals and how I made out:
activate 5 VHF only summits; Done, did 5
activate 20 winter bonus summits; Done, did 23
activate 20 bike ride to summits; only 9
activate 20 out of country summits; none, borders closed.
Get 20 S2S’s; total 61
to mentor (or torment) David (hiking partner) to write the test so he can activate as well. Done, late December 2020, VE6DTS.
Research, build and use 4 antennas that perform equal to and / or easier to deploy than the ever-dependable dipole. Only 2 worthwhile.
For 2021, my only challenge was to get out sometime when I have days off.
Malen
VE6VID
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Good news - G/WB activation achieved !
Bad news (not really) - one day later than I planned, completed on October 1st with G/WB-006 due to on/off weather
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I know of one other SOTA op who has figured out cost per point (ie…counts miles driven and mpg + restaurants and such)…that could be a pretty interesting stat to track on a personal level
My goal is to reach 3,500 s2s contacts. I’m very close, with only KXØR and four Swiss ahead of me. I started doing s2s when the award first became available, and I got certificate #1 for each of the first four milestones and then de-emphasized that chase. At the Covid lockdown, I resumed s2s, this time using search and pounce techniques. That works well, with my personal record standing at 282 points s2s earned in six hours. I’d like to beat that number, too.
Elliott, K6EL
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This is informative and quite funny. (Oh and just a smidge out of date… don’t mention Brexit)
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Cracking route… done before I was a licensed amateur and before I’d ever heard of SOTA.
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Got to be the St. Kilda sea stacks … 
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I had a hot sunny place in mind… 
Interesting interview here with Rob Woodall who ticked off all the Marilyns including a discussion about the sea stacks here: Ticked off: the man who climbed all 1,556 Marilyns.
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My goals seem to move very slowly (and my log gets put even more slowly… Please be patient the GM/SS log will appear ‘soon’) but I aimed to get 500 unique VHF/UHF as my current total of 501 includes about 4 where I had to resort to HF (shock, horror) to get a contact - mostly on the Outer Hebrides. Once the GM/SS log is actually loaded thiss hould have been achieved with a respectable margin.
The next challenge is to reach 5,000 s2s points which makes only slow progress but I am somewhere around 4,300 I believe but may be higher thanks to the Lake District SOTA weekend last month when we were in Southern Scotland (by coincidence we had booked months earlier). Then there is to reach 3,500 different chasing callsigns (getting near around 3450 I think). I realise this isn’t 3,500 different people as it depends which region the chaser is in and then there is the number of different activators chased (BTW I only work from summits so these contacts are all s2s). Again this is inflated by activators working in different regions but this one climbs rather slowly and is about 407 I believe, so reaching 500 will take some time (remember the range of VHF/UHF is very limited so I can’t work the continent and rarely reach EI or NI-land.)
I had had slight hopes of reaching 1000 winter bonus points (currently 777) but this is now totally out of reach owing to Covid and ‘too many birthdays’ but I hope to improve this score this season. The great thing is to ensure that you never run out of targets!
Viki M6BWA
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I originally hoped to make MG award and after reaching that I wanted to do the same again, but with CW activations only. Having made that too earlier this year, I’m now heading towards MGx2 but also looking at the S2S score. Single band MGs may be next, I may even already qualify on 40m but a bit of filtering is needed on a downloaded spreadsheet to sort out the details.
I have noticed a tendency for people to lose motivation after reaching MG as if that was the only goal in the first place. As a confirmed addict of portable operation I will continue anyway, but looking at the details of what bands and modes have been used, I keep looking at options to separate the contacts out. MG on 1296 would be a good goal…
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Hi Armin,
After seeing that you have achieved more in a year than I in 10 I think I’ll look at other aspects in the hobby. Very well done. Anyone for Solitaire?
73
Ron
vk3afw
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Hi,
Inaccessible Pinnacle GM/SI-002 has to be climbed. I helped MM0DHY do the first activation then after gaining my foundation licence went back a year later and activated the entire Skye Ridge in a single push. We found that the summit is too small for a HF antenna! Short article on GM/SI-002 info page.
73
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I should have made it clearer that my CW 1k points mark was already more than half way achieved when I qualified for the all-mode MG in 2018, so I only had about 400 to go. So from that point onwards I made sure of my 4 cw contacts first, before moving to voice modes. It took another 3 years of being very selective in the summits I activated. Support from the CW operators, including you Ron, was essential for this goal. Thanks!
Andrew vk1da/2uh
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HI,
Ardverekie wall has already been climbed by Adrian, MM0DHY in July 2008 as a charity event with his son, then successfully activated. I recall he even had a QSO halfway up on VHF and a rucksack antenna! The climb is on Binnein Schuas GM/WS-198 and is well worth it.
73
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That should be Binnein Shuas. Just waiting for the rain to stop!
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