{"id":1160,"date":"2012-01-03T18:14:36","date_gmt":"2012-01-04T01:14:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.schnizer.com\/SOTAblog\/?p=1160"},"modified":"2014-04-07T17:22:04","modified_gmt":"2014-04-07T23:22:04","slug":"wfr39-estes-cone-3348-11006-ft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.schnizer.com\/SOTAblog\/sota-trip-report\/wfr39-estes-cone-3348-11006-ft\/","title":{"rendered":"W\u00d8C\/FR-\u00d839 (Estes Cone) \u2013 3348 m \/ 11006 ft – 2nd activation"},"content":{"rendered":"

This was a re-activation for me. If you are looking for all the details on how to get there and other useful info, you can find the original trip-report with the necessary details right here<\/a>. This post has only a few specifics from today’s activation.<\/p>\n

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Estes Cone: View of RMNP from the summit<\/p><\/div>\n

After two days of high winds here in northern Colorado (I clocked 45 mph winds in my back yard – the news reported even higher winds in the mountains of up to 75 mph gusts) the weather forecast for today was excellent. I woke up to 17 degrees F (~minus 8 C) and blue skies. Since everybody in the family had the day off, I was joined by my wife and my daughter – making this a fun family affair. We left the house at nine o’clock with the goal of being at the trail-head of Estes Cone by 10, and on the air by noon local time (or 1900UTC). That’s how I announced my activation on SOTAwatch.org<\/a>. Since today was a federal holiday, traffic was minimal and the mostly dry roads allowed me to pass through Big Thompson Canyon<\/em> rather quickly. Nevertheless, we\u00a0 arrived at the TH 15 minutes later\u00a0 as expected because I underestimated the time it took to drive from Estes Park to the trail-head.<\/p>\n

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Estes Cone: On the way up<\/p><\/div>\n

Determined to keep my ‘appointment’ on the summit, I shouldered my pack and headed towards the mountain – splitting up our ‘activation team’. My seven year-old cannot yet keep up with me in deep snow and we planned to re-join later somewhere on the trail after the activation.<\/p>\n

There were two chances for an S2S contact today, one with VA2OTA on HF and the other with KF6LHX (Tim) who was activating W\u00d8C\/PR-\u00d814 near Breckenridge on VHF – that’s only 70 miles (~115 km), I covered larger distances on my HT before. On my way up, I was able to copy KT5E on 2m saying:”Your are Summits on the what?<\/em>” and knew immediately that Tim was OTA. I was unable to contact him directly however. I was still in the valley and surrounded by trees and mountains.\u00a0 I contacted KT5E and he relayed my message to Tim. By the time I arrived on ‘my’ summit he had already moved on – you can’t stay too long at 14236 ft (4339 m) in winter.<\/p>\n

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Photo by Tim – KF6LHX<\/p><\/div>\n

You can find Tim’s trip-report<\/a> on the SOTA reflector and see Tim’s PQL (Personal QSO Logger) shivering at high elevation on the right. Back home I learned that VA2OTA’s activation was cancelled due to bad weather – so that took care of all the S2S contacts possibilities for today.<\/p>\n

Today I looked a little closer at the topography between Quandary Peak and Estes Cone to see whether a contact would have been feasible… it does not look promising (see below):<\/p>\n

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Estes Cone: LOS to Quandary Peak (click for larger view)<\/p><\/div>\n

It took me an hour and 45 minutes to hike the three miles (~4.5 km) and 2000 ft (~600 m) of elevation through about two feet of (mostly) packed snow. I reached the summit at 11006 ft (3348 m) on-time and logged my first QSO at 19:00 UTC. The wind was blowing pretty strongly and I setup my equipment under the same rock formation than last time – about 30 feet below the summit. That blocked my signal towards the East and South-East but made the high winds a lot more bearable. The views from up here are spectacular. Longs Peak (4344 m \/ 14255 ft ) and Mt.Meeker (4240 m \/ 13911 ft ) at a close range (~4 miles \/ 6.5 km as the crows fly) and the snow-covered Mummy Range with several 13000+ ft (~4000 m) summits towards\u00a0 the NNW are all within view. On the other side, one can spot beautiful Lily Lake and in the distance Estes Park.<\/p>\n

I tuned the antenna for 17m and started calling CQ. N4EX (Rick) was the first who answered my call on HF and he spotted me as well (thanks Rick). I was forced to move to another frequency after my 12th QSO since some other HAM’s decided to settle on ‘my’ frequency – they did not react to any of my calls and I could not get any other contacts on 17m. Since my extremities started to feel cold, I was tempted to wrap it up and head out of the cold wind. Instead, I opted to give it a try on 20m and re-tuned the antenna, looked for a free frequency and started to announce my presence… no takers after five minutes on this band… time to pack-up and move my body to get warm.<\/p>\n

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Estes Cone: In the woods<\/p><\/div>\n

I was pretty much running\/sliding down the south-westerly facing route to catch-up with the rest of the family. I found them just below the saddle, singing Christmas songs while trudging through the trees on their snow-shoes.<\/p>\n

I was a perfect day in the mountains and it felt great to burn some of the calories which had accumulated around my waist over the holidays – too bad I could not reach Tim for a S2S.<\/p>\n

Some video Impressions:
\n<\/strong>httpvh:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=NFeMLIAqpdA<\/strong><\/p>\n

If you would like to leave questions or comments, please do so through Youtube<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n

\n\"ATTENTION\" \n\n!! WARNING !! There are old<\/b> mountaineers, and \nbold<\/b> mountaineers... there are no old-bold mountaineers. \nHiking and mountain climbing are potentially hazardous activities particularly in Colorado with its extreme elevations. I am not accepting responsibility for any death or injury resulting from activations based on my trip reports. Proper training, experience, and personal capability assessment is required - enjoy!\n<\/p>\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This was a re-activation for me. If you are looking for all the details on how to get there and other useful info, you can find the original trip-report with the necessary details right here. This post has only a … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,16],"tags":[25,17,28,10,36,23,7,6,22,21,8,18,19,27,26,53,9,24,29,56,20,54],"class_list":["post-1160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sota-trip-report","category-wo","tag-activation","tag-amateur-radio","tag-buddipole-antenna","tag-colorado","tag-estes-park","tag-foothills","tag-ham","tag-hiking","tag-k0mos","tag-mountain","tag-mountain-topping","tag-nature","tag-outdoors","tag-rmnp","tag-rocky-mountain-national-park","tag-snowshoeing","tag-sota","tag-summits-on-the-air","tag-trail-description","tag-w0fr-039","tag-wilderness","tag-winter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.schnizer.com\/SOTAblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.schnizer.com\/SOTAblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.schnizer.com\/SOTAblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.schnizer.com\/SOTAblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.schnizer.com\/SOTAblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1160"}],"version-history":[{"count":44,"href":"https:\/\/www.schnizer.com\/SOTAblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1160\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3985,"href":"https:\/\/www.schnizer.com\/SOTAblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1160\/revisions\/3985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.schnizer.com\/SOTAblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.schnizer.com\/SOTAblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.schnizer.com\/SOTAblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}