18 | February | 2026 | blog.benmook.com

1st –>
2nd –> (this one) https://blog.benmook.com/w6-sd-013-east-ord-mountain/
3rd –> https://blog.benmook.com/w6-sd-010-ord-mountain/

This was my second hike of the day, and second hike for the SoCal Winter SOTA fest. On the drive out to East Ord, I wasn’t paying attention to my map so I ended up in the wrong place, which is listed on a map as Grand View Mine. This would be a nice place to camp, as KB9ENS mentioned in his trip report. I wanted to start my hike from the north so I back tracked and found my way to Guzzler, as it’s listed on the map. There is no trail, and the hike starts off pretty steep. There are rock formations which make route finding tricky; I needed to backtrack several times to find a safer route. Did I mention it is steep? My definition of steep is 1000 feet of gain in 1 mile. This was something like 1800 feet of gain in a bit over a mile. It took much longer than I thought to reach the summit. At the top there was a register going back to 1988. I signed it and setup the Yaesu 817 for 2M. Made some local S2S over CW, and a few more on FM. There was a bit more time before 00:00 zulu, so I quickly setup HF, 20M and worked that as fast I could.

Since I started later than I liked, and it took me longer to reach the summit than anticipated, I was worried about losing daylight. I packed up everything and started heading down. The steep terrain and impact was hurting my knees, but I needed to beat the sun so I pushed through. About half way down, my knees really started hurting; stabbing knife pain. My stride shortened and I took breaks. The sun disappeared behind the mountains as the temperature dropped quickly. Soon, it was pitch black and the flashlight was in the truck. I still needed to navigate a dry waterfall and a wash, which was done by phone light. Luckily I was only in the dark for about 20 minutes. Had I not accidentally gone to Grand View, my timing would have been perfect.

https://sotl.as/summits/W6/SD-013

Total distance: 2.87 mi
Total climbing: 2326 ft

Download file: eastord.gpx

Date:16/01/2026 | Summit:W6/SD-013 (East Ord Mountain)

Time	Callsign	Band	Mode	Distance (km)	Notes
23:30	K6STR	144MHz	CW	115	S2S W6/ND-224 S599 R599
23:32	W6LOR	144MHz	CW	115	S2S W6/ND-224 S55N R599
23:36	KT5X	14MHz	CW		S55N R57N
23:38	K6MII	144MHz	FM	15	S2S W6/SD-443 S59 R59
23:45	N6JNY	144MHz	FM		S55 R55
23:47	K6HUB	144MHz	FM		S59 R59
23:52	KF7WI	14MHz	CW		S57N R55N
23:53	AC7P	14MHz	CW		S55N R55N
23:54	WW7D	14MHz	CW		S57N R55N
23:55	JG0AWE	14MHz	CW		S33N R33N
23:57	K9WO	14MHz	CW		S55N R44N
23:58	W0MNA	14MHz	CW		S55N R55N
23:59	K7SO	14MHz	CW		S55N R55N
23:59	W0ERI	14MHz	CW		S599 R599