A place to put my stuff
Related to the Summits On The Air (SOTA) program
On the way back towards Washington, DC from Indiana, I passed again through Ohio, this time to the south of the outbound route. I had targeted two SOTA peaks near Ashland, Ohio: W8O/NE-001 (Noblet Benchmark) and W8O/NE-003 (the Ashland County High Point). I did get to both sites, but only activated the former one. Both are discussed, below.
West of Pittsburgh in the direction of Chicago, the SOTA summits are few and far between, and what summits there are subtle, more like slowly graded hills than mountains. However, the Summit County HP, while not a eagle’s nest view, was my favorite summit from this trip.
I felt like I knew this town before I got there from looking at aerial photos and even “driving” some of it using Google Street View. The summit area is wide and flat, so there were a lot of options about where to pitch the antenna: the actual county high point, which is marked along the main road? In the trees behind the cemetery near a commercial antenna? In the parking lot of the Sikh Temple? Or in a park.
Continuing with activations on the way out to Indiana from Washington, DC, the next stop was Emmaville Mountain North, SOTA W3/SV019. The peak is on public property that can be accessed by following Bark Road. When I exited Interstate 70, my phone’s GPS initially wanted me to take Bark Road southwards and wrap all the way around. That didn’t make sense, since going the other way was shorter, so I ignored my cell phone GPS and went up the shortest way. Continue reading “SOTA W3/SV-019: Emmaville Mtn North”
I drove out from around the Washington, DC area to see friends in Valpariso, Indiana this summer and plotted an optimal (and optimistic) course to take me by SOTA summits on the way. There are plenty between Washington, DC and Pittsburgh, PA, but a lot fewer west of Pittsburgh. For optimal coverage, I chose slightly different outbound (Interstate 70) and return (Interstate 76) routes and looked principally at summits within 20 and ideally 10 km of my route, favoring those that would afford quick access.
The path to the summit is less complicated than it looks. Drive along Mountain Road until you can’t drive any more, then follow the power lines. Mountain Road starts paved, but transitions to gravel and potholes after a while. I stopped driving when I saw some fairly large boulders in the road, and wasn’t sure of axle clearance. I backed off a bit, pulled the car off to the side, and walked the rest of the way.
This summit is surrounded by private homes, and I had to circle around it a couple times before I found what I was looking for: a small service road that leads between houses up to a blue water tower and neighboring outbuilding. The road and tower are obvious on aerial photos, but the road could be mistaken for a driveway from along Triple Crown Drive, as even the tower is not visible from that road.
This summit is about an hour north of the Washington, DC area (outside rush hour periods). As mentioned by other reviewers on the SOTA site and clearly visible on GoogleMaps, it is about one mountain away from Camp David, but I can’t say that this had any bearing on the activation.
Every year, I spend a lot of time driving through New Jersey, but this year I thought I would stop there (being originally from New York, this takes some willpower).
As usual, I spent a while mapping out the sites before the trip. For the sake of efficiency, I divided them into three categories based on my expectation of easy access.
My plan was to string as many SOTA sites as I could together in each pass on the way back and forth between Washington, DC and New York. As often happens, I had to modify the plan substantially as the weekend unwound — due to changes in travel plans, I had to abort one day of activation. In the end, I activated two peaks: W2/NJ-001, New Jersey Highpoint, and W2/NJ-003, Kittatinny Mountain. In this post, I’ll talk about these peaks, as well as the others that remain on my to-do list.
I was in the Washington, DC area for a day, and couldn’t resist activating Sugarloaf Mountain — it is just too convenient a SOTA peak to ignore. Everytime I’m in the area, I think about going up it, but often summer weather has foiled those plans. Not this time, though. It was a sunny day for my 45 minute drive out from Bethesda, MD to the trailhead.
Le Pic Pelé was the third SOTA summit that I visited on April 23rd, after Les Cornes d’Urfé and Pierre Beille earlier in the day.
From aerial photos, I could see that there are at least two paths that wind up to the peak, and I marked the base of those paths as potential way points in my GPS. However, following the default Google Maps driving directions, I got to a point where my phone told me to take a left up a road that was clearly too rough for my car.
However, it did seem like a straightforward no-fuss way to get to the top, so I pulled the car over and parked in a gravel clearing, “Le Reculon”, near some stacked logs across the street from the rough road.