Klee Wyck Park

It was Ralph and my second attempt to activate the small park in West Vancouver. Last week we had planned to visit but as we left my house, we noticed a huge traffic delay on the highway due to an accident on the bridge. Rather than wait in the car we decided to redirect our attention to Redwood Park for the day. Today the route looked normal, and we set out for a coffee and then straight to the park. We made good time on the highway and onto Taylor Way and then Keith Road. Soon we arrived at the park. The park has a narrow poorly marked driveway opening onto the road. At first, I wasn’t sure it was open for driving but upon seeing signs saying no overnight parking I felt comfortable heading in.

The narrow driveway snakes past a city’s works yard where they have greenhouses growing plants for use throughout the city. The road continued past a grassy area and then down a short slope to a ring road with a widened parking area along the eastern side. We were the only ones there and I pulled up to the edge and parked. Ralph and I then got out to explore the park and select places to operate our radios. Alongside the pavement we noticed an old totem pole laying on the ground. A sign saying it was put to rest but still awaiting a final location, the pole was quite rotten in places and had seen its last days upright.

We continued along the road the way we came in on, and Ralph spotted a nice area he could use. We soon reached a huge Rhododendron that was in bloom. I had Ralph stand in front of it to show it size as it must have been 20 feet tall! The park was an interweave of grass, trails and overgrown garden areas. It offered a number of secluded areas where one could enjoy just being in the outdoors yet so close to town. The largest grassy patch has a lone picnic table in it which would be ideal for my station. We returned to the car and as we were loading our gear into my cart another visitor arrived. She had four poodles that were coming for a romp and ball chase. The owner comes regularly as the park is fenced and the layout ideal for dogs to run around.

I soon was at the picnic table deciding how to deploy my antenna. The park is alongside the Capilano river and directly south and below the upper level’s highway. Though there are apartment buildings on the SW corner the area is fairly isolated from rural noise, so I wasn’t too worried about interference when I set up my mast. Soon I was set up and waiting for Ralph. I scanned the bands and though a number of parks were listed as being active I cold hear none nor any hunters talking to them. I then wandered across the grass to Ralph to see what was slowing him down. He was almost set up when I arrived and so I walked back to my station, and we proceeded to work each other across 11 radio bands.

 Done with working Ralph, we decided to try the airwaves for 20 minutes and check back. I then scanned the bands again but still heard nothing, I noticed that the background noise level was up to S5+ and so I decided I would try my noise cancellation unit. It made no difference; the noise was not local but atmospheric. In fact, there was an on-going Geomagnetic Storm progressing which was blocking most radio contacts. Ralph and I continued calling for the time period but when we chatted neither of us had made a single contact. Due to the bad conditions we decided to pack up and beat the traffic. I decided to do one last pass through the listed activations. While listening for one park I heard a signal off frequency to the activator’s posted value. I moved up to the frequency and heard a chap in Utah operating from a summit. He was doing a summits-on-the-air activation. I responded to his call, and we were able to work each other quite easily. He was also fortunately in another park, and I managed a park-to-park contact. Done with him I packed up and joined Ralph back at my car. It had not been a good day for radio but we both enjoyed the visit to the park and just getting out and doing something a bit different for the day. There are four more parks in West Vancouver that neither of us have done yet, so our summer will see us returning to the area a few more times.