A Short Hike

As luck would have it I am changing jobs and was lucky enough to have Black Friday off. So what would any dedicated Sota activator do on such a day of deals and bargains? Yep, I climbed Kratka Ridge. For those not native to this area it’s an abandoned ski site which was last in service about 10 years ago. A fire in the restaurant/lift house shut it down.

I started out at 5am with my coffee and banana. I got to the parking area at about 0620 which was just in time for the sun to come out. There was a dusting of snow on the ground, oh and “Chains Required” signs. I imagine for those of us that may get stuck.

Dusting on Angeles Crest

I parked West of the large structure that is there and climbed up. I didn’t want to disturb the occupants of the dwelling. From there I followed the road. You can count on this road to take you straight up.

Inhabited Structure

Head this Way Towards the Road

A Cool Summit

From this point you just follow the road up. It’s a steep climb but this hike isn’t that long so it about evens out for difficulty level. Once you keep following it you hook around to the last and highest lift.  Walk on the lift and make a right, you’ll see a trail which takes you to the high point of the ridge. I went all the way to the end, it has the best views and I was able to prop my tripod against a log without using guy lines.

Top Skit Lift

Just a bit cold

When I got to the top there was a 10-20 mile/hr wind blowing. I was glad I was in layers and had my Gortex on. The only thing I forgot was some full fingered gloves.

Nature

Activation

One of the main goals of this activation was for me to use my new APRS setup. It consists of A wouxon, Mobilnk TNC, and my Galaxy S5 running APRSDROID. Being that cell reception is the pitts up here everything worked perfectly. My spots flew out via APRS as they should. My first spot was for 146.520. I usually can count on the local chasers to get my “4”. No dice this time, being that it was 0730. I don’t blame them, be it sleeping in or Black Friday. So I switched to 20 meters, 14.334.

This worked out smoothly as my spot went out and they were lining up. Until… some OM came down from 14.345 complaing of splatter from us and they had a well established net. Really? Splatter with that much between us? So I tried to move however couldn’t find an open slot on the band.  So it was on to 40 meters. One problem. By time I got setup my fingers were so frozen I couldn’t hook the coax up let alone write. But all in all it was a success.

I may rethink anymore activations at 20 degrees. 😉

The Setup

Gortext!