Mt Veeder, W6/NS-172

Activated 2020-08-09

Posted 2020-08-09

Well this was a weird one! I scrambled up Mt. Veeder, W6/NC-172, a 2960' peak in Napa County, and completed its first SOTA activation.

Mt. Veeder is on the ridge between the Sonoma and Napa valleys, just an hour or so outside of San Francisco. The area burned badly in the 2017 wine country fires. The peak of Mt. Veeder lies in an old Girl Scout camp that's now owned by the Napa County Regional Park and Open Space District.

The area is still badly damaged: downed trees and very overgrown broom, chaparral, and poison oak block the ridge road. Access without trespassing is tricky, and I was grateful that a good friend with vast local knowledge was able to lead us to the peak.

We were very pressed for time, and it wasn't clear we'd make it into the activation zone before needing to turn around to attend to life responsibilities. However, the trail eventually opened up, and because the peak is quite broad, we made it into the AZ well before the formal peak. I had time to quickly set up the FT-818 and try to raise some folks on 146.520.

I called CQ SOTA once or twice and immediately got a call from K6DJV, who I'd worked just the day before on Pine Mountain! What a nice guy for returning my calls. Dereck apparently reached out to some other folks (on K6POU??), because in short order KM6TAU came looking for a contact. Strangely, I was receiving him well, and DJV could hear both me and him, but he couldn't hear me.

So, I trolled for some other contacts. At this point, we were really running out of time, so I started to pack up my bag while still calling CQs. I decided to take the FT-818 mobile for as long as we were in the AZ, to try to finish the activation. Just as I was shouldering my bag, I got a response from Matthew N4DLA in Orinda, and then KM6TAU tried again after changing his QTH- and this time it worked! We had a quick QSO, and I was determined to finish the activation.

I made another quick CQ, and right as we were exiting the AZ, I got a response from K6RTO from just down the hill in Sonoma, who gave a booming signal report. We chatted very quickly, I threw the radio in my bag, and we scrambled back down to the cars!

We got back the the cars sweaty, dirty, scratched up, probably covered in poison oak, but very happy for an absurd quick run up Mt. Veeder and a successful activation.