I guess that many activators have one, or maybe even several, favourite summits they definitely want to activate. One of my absolute favourites was the destination of my latest activations.
The Schrankogel, OE/TI-010, in the Austrian Alps is neither the highest nor the most famous summit, least of all is it a “cheapie” or bargain SOTA reference.With its height of nearly 3500 meter ASL and its location centered in the Stubai Alps its ascent requires some efforts and some willingness to hike in alpine regions.
The German and the English Wikpedia pages provide two nice photos of this mountain, showing its impressive silhouette:
I hope these two photos explain a little bit my motivation for activating this summit.
Of course, the activation of such a summit requires appropriate weather conditions and though the weather forecast during this years summer wasn’t very reliable, I saw a slight chance for an activation at last Friday and Saturday.
Typically the Schrankogel is being ascended in a two days tour, the first day starts with the 500 height meter ascent from the car park in the small village Gries (1600m ASL) to the Amberger Hut (2100m ASL) and ends optionally with an acclimatisation tour to the Vorderer Sulzkogel (OE/TI-115 , 2796m ASL) which adds another 700m height gain. The second day can then be used for the 1400m ascend to the Schrankogel.
Because the weather forecast predicted a slightly better weather for Friday, I decided to turn around this plan, i.e. to do a complete ascent from the car park in Gries to the top of the Schrankogel at this day and optionally stay overnight at the Amberger Hut and, provided that the weather allows, activate OE/TI-115 at Saturday.
This plan brought me the first almost sleepless night, because I had to jump out of my bed at 2:00 AM local time (00:00 UTC) in order to throw all my equipment into my rucksack, have a breakfast (or should I better say: late evening meal 
) and to head for the Stubai Alps. After a 2.5 hours drive with the car, I left the car park at 06:00 AM local time and started to cover the first part to the Amberger Hut by bicycle.
After a short pause at the Amberger Hut, where I informed the keepers of the Hut about my plan to ascend to the Schrankogel, I proceeded with the second part, i.e. the ascent to the summit. I decided to do a complete crossing of the Schrankogel, i.e. ascending via the east ridge and descending along the south-west-ridge. On the German Wikipedia’s picture this can be seen very good as the east ridge goes down at the right side of the summit. The south-west ridge runs down along the left side in the picture. The crossing is longer and a bit more challenging than the typical ascent via the south-west ridge, but it promised a more interesting tour. At Friday only one other climber did the same crossing, while a few others ascended and descended again via the south-west ridge.
Weather was fine in the morning and the conditions at the east ridge were quite good. Under worse conditions snow and ice would have required crampons, but at this day crampons were not needed. After a nice walk to the beginning of the Schwarzenbergferner glacier the scramble (or is it called free rock climbing?) along the east ridge began and still in the morning I arrived with blue sky and comfortable temperatures on the summit. The following activation on the 30m and 20m band in CW and SSB brought more than 50 contacts into my log, thereof 5 summit to summits. I always kept an eye to the weather, because during my activation the sky covered rapidly with thick clouds. That was the signal for me to finish my activation and pack everything again in my rucksack, because I didn’t want to risk getting into a thunderstorm on this summit. So I decided to descend along the south-west ridge, also a nice scramble was involved nearby the summit. The rest of the tour was steep hiking down to the hut.
After the last very short night, I was looking forward for a quiet night in order to reduce my sleeping deficit. Far from it! The members of the group with whom I shared the same room had the silly idea to leave at 03:30 AM local time (01:30 UTC) in order to look for a nearby glacier for their beginners glacier training. After a loud alarm sound from their mobile phones the light in the room has been switched on mercilessly and the door has been opened and closed permanently and noisy, accompanied by the babbling of the group. Resulting again in a very short night for me.
Anyway, I started half past 06:00 AM local time (04:30 UTC) to my second summit OE/TI-115, Vorderer Sulzkogel, on a much easier route than the ascent up to the Schrankogel. I arrived at about 08:00 AM (06:00 UTC) on the small summit and started my activation with 20m CW and was immediately surprised when 2 VK2 station came back to my 5Watt signal. With another VK1 station and two VK3 stations on SSB with 10Watt on my side and again another two VK3 stations on CW (again 5Watt), the band seemed to be in a very good shape. At least, for me this was the highest number of VK contacts during a single activation. After nearly 50 contacts on 20m CW and SSB as well as 30m CW the weather changed again to the worse. So I packed all my equipment in my rucksack and rushed down again to the hut. From their I drove again with my bicycle back to the car park. Soon after I left the car park it began to rain. So I have been quite lucky with the weather.
Thanks a lot to all chasers and activators for calling me.
All in all, I was really pleased with these two days and hoped really for bad weather for Sunday in order to have a good night’s rest. But unfortunately the weather forecast for Sunday looks quite promising for an activation
73 Stephan, DM1LE
So, in spite of the fine weather, I will not be out today for an activation, but will use the time for logging my contacts into the SOTA database.