Hull Mountain, W6/CC-011

Activated 2022-04-04

Posted 2022-04-05

We recently relocated to Hopland, CA, in southern Mendocino County. Of course, I've been eyeing Caltopo and Google Earth, planning trips to explore the vast swath of green just a bit to my east: the Mendocino National Forest.

The forest covers nearly a million acres across six counties. The forest is the only National Forest in California without a paved road through it. It includes four wilderness areas, including the Yolla Bolly, which I'm particularly interested in checking out soon. The forest is Southern end of series of public lands which stretch past the Oregon border, and across to Shasta and down through the Sierras. You really get a sense of California's size and geographic diversity by poking around a bit.

I had a free Sunday last weekend, and decided it was a good day to finally explore. I packed a lunch, put a couple radios in a backpack, and headed out with the goal of at least making it to Lake Pillsbury to check out the gravel airstrip there, and if time allowed, to drive up to Hull Mountain and attempt a SOTA activation.

I quickly made it to Lake Pillsbury and got to see the airstrip. At some point I'll finish up getting my pilot's licence- it would be very, very fun to take a taildragger out to remote strips like that.

There were no planes out there that day, and not much of anything going on, so I pushed on up the hill.

The route up to Hull mountain from Lake Pillsbury is simple: take the forest route M1 until you get to the obvious intersection to the peak road (19N27). Most of the M1 would be easily doable in a reasonable 2WD vehicle, but I was really happy to have a 4WD for the last few miles where it got steep, loose, and a bit more rutted than I'd want to do a low-clearance car.

I decided to hike up the last quarter mile or so on 19N27 to make up for sitting the truck for hours. That worked out pretty well, since there was still some significant snow on the road after the first turn or so.

I quickly made the peak after skirting some remaining snow. On the peak there's a steel staircase which clearly used to serve a fire lookout that's now burned down. The Hull Moutain area suffered terribly in the 2020 August Complex fires, which burned a million acres in total. If you were in San Francisco the summer of 2020 you no doubt remember the day the sun never came up and the sky was a dark orange all day- that smoke was from this mountain.

I had decent cell (Verizon) service on the peak, and once there the reminders of modern life poured in after having been disconnected for a few hours. I had my HT on while I walked up and heard a couple of folks on 146.520, so once up on top of the mountain I quickly called them to get a couple of easy contacts. After a couple of false starts I got a good contact with KN6MGK in Chico, but not his buddy (whose call I didn't write down, I believe the suffix was ANN).

I spent a few minutes to set up the 818, which has slightly higer power and a better rubby ducky than my HT, and used that to make a few more contacts. Being at nealy 7000ft with nearly-perfect LoS to much of the Sacramento Valley, it wasn't hard to quickly make enough contacts to activate the peak- I never even had to unroll the J-Pole. I was really happy to talk to a couple of nice guys, WA6FUL and WB6FAO, in Petaluma- very cool to reach south west towards the Bay Area. I also chatted with KN6NGE and N6UTV, who I see is active on the 2m SSB Bozo net (which I've checked in to a few times, and am interested to see if I can work from these same peaks).

I ate a quick sandwich and enjoyed the view- to the east a final ridge of the coast range and then the Sacramento Valley, with the Sierras in the distance. To the west, the Lake Pillsbury basin and seemingly endless ridges to the horizon. I scrambled back down to the truck and considered following the M1 north and eventually gettig to Covelo, but I very quickly encountered snow across the road and turned around to slowly drive the way I came.