in October I will be travelling along some common tourist routes in California, Nevada and Arizona. My family will join me on this trip (I have to show them around ), so there won’t be as much time for SOTA as I’d like, but the opportunity to do a few quick activations in new associations would be too good to pass up.
Our (preliminary) route will take us from San Francisco along the coast to Santa Barbara, then through Death Valley to Las Vegas, via I-15 to Lake Powell, from there to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, and finally to Los Angeles via US-66/I-40.
As there will be older family members who aren’t big hikers, I’m looking for recommendations on easy summits along the route. Here is my wishlist:
Short hike (< 1 hour round trip) from where a rental car can take us
Easy path with little elevation gain (say, 300 ft max.)
Fence post or similar available on summit for quickly putting up an antenna pole
Nice views or other attractions to keep the non-hams in good spirits are a plus
Any recommendations on summits that more or less fit these criteria would be very much appreciated. Of course also any other must-sees/must-dos that I may not have thought about
I’m looking forward to many QSOs with chasers (or maybe even activators!) I’d never have a chance to work during activations in Europe!
Thanks again to all for the inputs – the trip was a full success, and I thought I’d share my experiences here in case someone else is looking for the same thing and stumbles upon this thread in the future.
I ended up activating the following summits:
W6/NC-423 (Mount Davidson)
right in the middle of San Francisco
~25 minutes walk from Forest Hill metro station
very nice views
relatively few people (compared to e.g. Twin Peaks)
line of sight to a huge area/population, plenty of QSOs on 2m with the handheld
W6/CC-045 (Mount Diablo)
drive-up about two hours from San Francisco
very high prominence => excellent views
quite crowded
W6/ND-144 (Dante Benchmark)
10 minutes walk from Dante’s View parking lot in Death Valley
nice views
despite a crowded parking lot there was nobody else at the actual summit
W7N/CK-227 (Lone Mountain)
20 minutes drive from Las Vegas strip + 20 minutes uphill hike
good views of the city
seems quite popular with the locals
W7U/WS-124 (Shinob Kibe)
located a few driving minutes away from the fastest route between Las Vegas and Page AZ (Lake Powell)
20 minutes uphill hike
W7A/CN-013 (Grandview Benchmark)
about 1.5 miles from the Grand Canyon South Rim road
drive-up, unpaved, but suitable for normal cars (or just walk from the paved road, as I did)
very flat and huge AZ
lookout tower at summit (uppermost section locked)
refreshing getaway from the crazy tourist crowds in Grand Canyon National Park
W7A/CS-038 (Beacon Hill)
15 minutes drive + ~20 minutes hike from Williams AZ
On Mount Davidson, Elliott @K6EL came to visit me on the summit shortly after our QSO, which was very cool of him!
I was mostly activating in the afternoon, so Europe DX didn’t have much chance, but I got a contact to ZL1BYZ once, and on an early morning activation worked SA4BLM and heard (but not worked) HB9AFI.
Equipment was a KX3 with internal NiMH (to avoid Lithium security check issues), an AlexLoop, and an EFHW with a 10 m pole.
All in all these were not activations to be particularly proud of, with little hiking, but my duties as family tour guide didn’t allow for more. I will definitely return to W6/W7 some time, with more radio gear and SOTA as a top priority There is so much to explore (and activate) here, it’s unbelieveable.
), so there won’t be as much time for SOTA as I’d like, but the opportunity to do a few quick activations in new associations would be too good to pass up.
There is so much to explore (and activate) here, it’s unbelieveable.