Mount Thom in the Hot Sun

Saturday was forecast to be a warm pleasant day for outside adventures and for a change Ralph and I decided to activate a summit in the Summits-on-the-air program rather than a park. We have only done a single summit so far this year and felt it was time for another. I suggested Mount Thom in the Chilliwack area as being a good choice. It has a short 750m walk and offers a good vantage on the entire Fraser Valley. He agreed that it would be a good choice and so come Saturday morning we set out for the summit.

When reviewing the route the night before, the Navcom indicated a travel time of an hour 10, but this morning it was up to an hour and a half. The freeway was quite congested and moving slowly in a number of spots. With little alternative, we set out along the route for the summit. The time was quite accurate and we arrived at the parking lot around 12:15. Donning our packs, we started out along the trail. The trail does an initial dip before ascending the distance to the summit viewpoint.

We took our time along the trail as the day was already warm and we weren’t wanting to arrive too exhausted even with a short hike. We arrived at the viewpoint about 20 minutes later and after taking a few minutes to take in the view of the valley and gather a few photos, we started to assemble our stations. Ralph would be doing HF contacts much as he does at a park. I would stay of 2m but up here I would be using my yagi and mobile radio. I quickly got it assembled and before I even got out a call, club member Jim called for me! He was mobile and waiting for me.

I quickly worked him and talked for a couple of minutes before looking for a few more contacts. Soon after Jim, Bill from the club came in followed by one of my regular chasers from Abbotsford. Two more followed in quick succession and then Ken and Fred from the club answered my hail. Responses slowed down at that point and I took a break to eat some lunch. Over the next twenty minutes I made a few more calls between times of talking to people curious about my activity. A younger couple who asked a few questions had no idea what amateur radio was.

I finished my activation with 11 logged. It was a decent number for 2m VHF work from far up the valley. Meanwhile, Ralph was busy doing CW on 20m getting responses from the mid-western states. He managed 17 contacts in that time period. As we have seen over the months SOTA does better on CW than sideband, whereas Pota has more activity on sideband than CW. This being a SOTA activation I wasn’t surprised that he had more than me.

Done with radio we packed up the gear. Today we decided to walk the loop trail around the summit area and see what the other viewpoints had to offer. The route was mostly downhill and did offer a few more views but they were somewhat obscured by over-growth and didn’t offer the spectacular view of the main view point. I was glad we took the time to see the other locations as we have talked about doing so on previous visits. That route is a bit longer but seems to offer a gentler slope, perhaps we will take it up next visit.

Done with the trails we loaded our gear into the car and set out for a nearby Starbucks for a cool drink. The navcom had us follow the reverse route by which we came and we made better time going home.