After 2 failed attempts to activate this summit, one in 2016 and the other one a few weeks ago, I have finally managed to do it today. It wasn’t easy but it was finally done.
This is how it looked like from the summit I activated last Saturday.
Here you’ll see its location to the North-West of Pamplona.
This is another one of the summits I can see from my rental appartment balcony:
I can now say I have activated them all in this picture.
The alarm woke me up at 5h45 utc, I got dressed for the mountain, had breakfast, prepared a small ham and cheese sandwich and a can of water, took my SOTA kit, the dog, drove the 45Km to the start point and I started my hike by 7h25 utc.
From my 2 previous failed attempts, I knew this would be a long hike, but I can tell you now it was even longer than expected, as it took me 3 hours and 25 minutes to reach the summit, after about 10 Km hiked and 850m of elevation gained.
About half an hour after I started the hike some small drops of water started to fall from the low cloud present at that time. The forest I was crossing through was still in winter mode, albeit not less beautiful for such reason:
I found snow and it had started raining when I had gained 565m elevation and I took this picture:
It kept raining and further up and ahead I got into fog having to cross several snow patches like this:
I wrongly believed that I had reached the summit because it was so foggy that I could not see much around, but after checking the coordinates of the summit against the reading in my GPS, I realised that I was very near but not exactly in the summit. Luckily, the fog cleared a very little bit and I could see that there was a bigger and rocky mass of mountain further ahead and it looked like it was also higher than the place where I was at. So I headed there and kept hiking up on very wet and slippery rocks. At one point I had the second and this time harder contraction of my right leg caffle twin muscles, which forced me to stop in a very bad position and do some stretching by extending my leg and pulling my foot upwards. Fortunately this episode passed well and I could soon continue with special care for my twin muscles.
After nearly 3 hours and a half hiking I finally found the trig point barely visible in the fog:
And the true summit was finally reached:
This is the name I had always known for this mountain and the one most of people here use. I can’t imagine where the SOTA name Intzako Dorrea comes from.
I setup with my 10m long endfed wire and the 6m of counterpoise wire on the rocks.
It was raining a bit when I started the activation, so I had to protect my rigs with my own body and a plastic bag where I use to have my SOTA kit in.
The views from the operating position were really poor:
It was raining a bit when I started the activation, so I had to protect my rigs with my own body and a plastic bag where I use to have my SOTA kit in.
The views from the operating position were really poor:
Fortunately, the rain stopped during my activation and later, towards the end of it, the fog even vanished and I received a very welcome sunshine when I was already shivering.
The activation went like this:
- 40m CW: 16 QSOs logged in 24 minutes, 2 of which were S2S with Fabio IK2LEY/P at I/LO-243 and Juerg HB9BIN/P at HB/SO-010.
- 30m CW: 18 QSOs in 23 minutes, 1 of which was S2S with Mark HB9DBM/P at HB/ZH-014.
- 20m SSB: 11 QSOs in 16 minutes. All of them from Europe.
- 20m CW: 20 QSOs in 27 minutes, 2 of which were DX from the USA.
This is the full log with 65 QSOs (2 DX from USA) and 2 S2S:
This is the S2S log:
Here you’ll see a very happy and highly satisfied activator:
As I mentioned above, towards the end of the activation, the fog vanished a bit and I was astonished with the absolutely magnificent views I had after so much time almost blind in the fog. Here are some pics:
Across the valley of Leitza (Leitzaran in basque) you’ll see quite high the highway connecting Pamplona and San Sebastian in the coast in just a 45 minutes drive.
View towards the North:
View towards the East:
Views towards the West:
After packing up, I started what my body felt like a neverending descent which took me almost 3 hours.
Bye and thank you Mt. Intzako Dorrea (Irumugarrieta):
Bye and thank you Mt. Intzako Dorrea (Irumugarrieta):
As I was descending, I couldn’t resist taking some more pictures now that the visibility was much better than that during the ascent.
This one is the 6 pointer SOTA Mt Beriain far in the distance:
This one is the 6 pointer SOTA Mt Beriain far in the distance:
I finally got back to the car at 16h10 utc, after nearly 9 hours enjoying all the aspects of SOTA.
I hope that you liked the report as much as I enjoyed the day. Should that be the case, thanks for clicking the like button.
I hope that you liked the report as much as I enjoyed the day. Should that be the case, thanks for clicking the like button.
Thanks dear chasers for your calls and QSOs. Thanks also to the colleagues who spotted me on SOTAwatch and the DX cluster. That’s highly appreciated.
I’ll be looking forward to copying you all again soon from another summit.
73,
Guru
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