Black Hill is a easy 1 point summit in Morro Bay with beautiful views of the ocean. You can drive most of the way to the top, free parking at the trailhead. After that it’s an easy walk to the summit on a well traveled dirt path. I brought along a KH1 and used the internal whip antenna. There is room for a full sized antenna, but the area is kinda small and a popular place to visit, so I didn’t want wires everywhere. Worked 15M, 17M and 20M and quickly logged 7 stations, including two S2S.
Kel and I hiked up to this summit on the way up to Morro Bay. Down by the trailhead the temperature was a nice, cool 75F with a calm ocean breeze. This abruptly changed as we ascended. Inland temperatures around 100F were blowing over the ridge the trail follows. There is little shade and I was uncomfortably hot. Quite a bit of poison oak along the trail. A communications site is at the top with a few trees offering much appreciated shade and a view of the ocean. I used the KH1 and worked 15m, 17m, and 20m on the internal whip. Didn’t get a ton of QSOs but enough for a valid activation.
Whale Peak is in Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, so this counts as POTA in addition to a SOTA activation if that’s your thing. You should probably be in a high clearance vehicle to get to the trailhead. Once there, the actual trail wasn’t obvious. You need to scramble up some granite boulders, at which point a well defined trail becomes visible. If I recall, there are two places where the trail kinda disappears, so bring a GPS with a map loaded.
The summit is beautiful, with Pinion Pines, Cholla, Creosote, and other desert plants. Once at the top I worked 20m and 40m CW. Attempted to use my new KH1, but ended up using a MTR 4b. Cold wind was starting to pickup, so I headed back down the hill and drove to a secret camping spot for the night. If you’re in the area, don’t skip this one.
This is a pretty straight forward hike up to East Butte, about 1.5 miles and 750 feet of elevation gain. The summit is located in Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, so this activation counts as POTA too if that’s your thing. I completed this summit in early March, which felt like a perfect time to be out in the desert. Lots of Ocotillo, Creosote, and even some Desert Lily. There is a register placed at the top.
This was the third and last SOTA activation over a weekend trip to Anza-Borrego. It was later in the day and I needed to pick up my bike-packing pals in a few hours not too far from this summit so I had to make it a quick one. I parked the Jeep off the main road to the mine ruins, just before an area where the road was washed out, then hiked. I followed an old service road that went to the top of the mine ruins, then a sketchy scramble up a steep embankment to continue on. I’m glad I had some tracks to follow, as there are several ridges one could follow that dead-end; one could get somewhat lost up there. After a spirited walk to the top, I signed the register and waited for 00:00 UTC to start my activation. I stretched out my EFHW antenna and connected it to an MTR4B, first working 40M, then 20M. I got a text from the bike packing group with an ETA for their pickup so I packed up and headed down the hill the same way I came. The sketchy part was worse coming down, but overall it was a pretty easy hike, and perhaps my favorite of the weekend. After picking up the bike packing group, we went to Agua Caliente County Park for a dip in their excellent hot spring pool.
Chariot Mountain was the second of two summits I completed while camping at Cuyamaca Rancho State Park with the So. Cal SOTA group. Before the event N6MTB published a route from camp to the summit of Chariot. At that point my mind was made up, this is what I was going to do. After a quick breakfast, I jumped on the bike and headed up the mountain.
The ride was awesome, starting with some single track right at the camp, then into more single track through a meadow, to a fire road, to more single track through another meadow. Oh, weather was perfect too! Near the end of the fun stuff there is a big downhill over a fire road which leads to the bottom of Chariot. This wasn’t going to be fun climbing up! Once at the bottom, I realized there isn’t a trail up to the top! The summit is also guarded by thick pokey bushes. I stashed my bike, gathered my stuff and started the painful bushwhack to the top.
Since I didn’t have a backpack, I was hand carrying everything I couldn’t fit onto my pockets. Unfortunately, my Yaesu HT was clipped to my pocket and disappeared somewhere in the brush. I was never going to find it. After attempting to backtrack my exact route for 15 minutes or so, I heard a radios squelch crack open – Ara was on a summit, and I was able to locate my radio about 30 feet away from where I was standing. I would have never found it otherwise!
I now had to backtrack through the brush again. My skin was starting to feel ‘raw’ from all the scratches. I wasn’t having a good time. Fortunately, the higher you go, the thinner the brush, and near the top, there isn’t any brush! Once on the actual summit, I signed the register and pulled out my KH1 with the whip. Worked 15, 17, and 20M, then 2M FM. After exhausting all the chasers I started my decent through the brush once again.
Back at the road it took me a minute to find my bike and pack all my stuff up for the ride back to camp. That big uphill wasn’t so bad and before I knew it I was back riding through the various meadows on single track. I chose not to take the exact route back, which was rad because I ran into Bill and Drew on the main road and rode with them back to camp on a different trail. What a rad day!
Cuyamaca Peak is one of two summits I completed while camping at Cuyamaca Rancho State Park with the So. Cal SOTA group. I rode my mountain bike up the steep paved road from the campground and ended up operating in a gravel parking area near the tower facility. There was thick fog, with water accumulating on the infrastructure above. Whenever the wind blew, it would feel like it was raining, and perhaps it was a bit. It was starting to get late by the time I got up there, so I worked 20M CW, then 2M FM which got me most of the camping group in 3 minutes. I took a different way down to make a loop out of the ride, but I think I would go up this way next time as it was a nicer experience.
I woke up in the back of my truck after a long night of camping shenanigans. E. was up making coffee and was on the fence about doing another hike after climbing Dome Mountain the previous day. I was too honestly. E. headed home and I said, “screw it, I’m basically already there”. I think that extra bit of motivation came from the fact that nobody had ever activated this summit before – I would be the first!
It took an hour to drive dirt roads which lead into a wilderness area. Near the summit there was a small area to park off the road. I left the truck and started slowly hiking up the hill. It’s about two miles round trip with 1,000′ of elevation gain, so pretty steep. There was several areas of loose talus and scree which required careful movements. I slipped multiple times on this one so maybe I wasn’t careful enough haha.
The top is a sharp ridge with enough space to put up a dipole or EFHW antenna. There is a register from 2012 which had more entries than Dome Mountain. Worked 15m and 17m on the new KH1. When I went to connect it to my 20m, 30m, and 40m EFHW antenna it had high SWR on all bands and I couldn’t figure out why; luckily I had a backup radio for 40m.
I headed down the same way I went up, sliding on the scree made for a quick decent. Once at the truck I back tracked to HWY 395, but made a few stops to explore some mining ruins and various other desert curiosities. By the time I got to the paved road it was dark. Perfect timing!
So, this hike was kinda special in the since that the summit has never been activated before. Additionally, after 250 SOTA activations under my belt, I’ve never gotten a first activation. Since I was camping and hiking around in the area, bagging this peak was a priority.
My hiking partner E. drove up from Los Angeles very early in the morning to meet me at the place I was camping near Fremont Mountain. From there, we got in the truck and headed over to the trailhead, which was clearly marked with a hiking register. From here we traveled a bit west to check out some petroglyphs, then east to get back on an old jeep trail which got us closer to the bottom of Dome.
Hiking up past the jeep trail was steep, with loose rocks and several false summits. I stopped several times to rest and enjoy the views as we ascended from the desert floor. It was windy and cool. At the summit, I used my new Elecraft KH1 with the telescoping whip for the first time ever on the 15m band, then to 17m.
Relentless cold wind was getting to me and E. We signed the summit register which was placed in 1979 and started the trek down. Caution needed to be used going down as rocks were quite loose. Once down the steep part we jumped back on the old jeep road and headed back to the trailhead. Along the way I think we found the steam well which I’ve seen on maps. Unfortunately, there was no longer any steam that we could find.
After activating Government Peak, I headed over to El Paso Peaks for another easy activation. Getting here was pretty simple; make a left turn on Motocross Road from Hwy 395 and take it all the way to a commercial communication site at the top of a hill. The road is paved, but very rough – so much that people have been driving off to the side where it’s much smoother. Once there, I parked in a large area between building and started hiking over to the summit by following a jeep trail, eventually breaking away and heading to the highest point.
At the top was a narrow knife edge ridge where I strung out my linked 40m EFHW antenna. Weather was perfect. These desert summits can be absolutely brutal with high wind and hot/ cold temps so I was happy to relax a bit while waiting for the UTC day to change. Worked 20M and 40M CW. After running the pileup I packed everything up and went back to the truck the same way I came. I took a bit of time at the communications site to look at an old AT&T long lines tower which had been striped of it’s antennas. From there I headed over to Randsburg, stopped at The Joint for a few beers and a smash burger before heading out to my camp for the night.
