Mount Woodside and the True Summit

Tount Woodside is one of the few summits where one can drive to the top and be in the operating zone for Summits on the Air.I have driven to the top several times and was looking forward to a return visit. The official SOTA peak location is vastly different from where Google Earth shows as the summit, so it was a goal for today’s trip to explore the summit and confirm the true location. I had hoped to head out a week earlier but the weather got in the way and I stayed home and did some yard work. Today the weather was sunny and pleasant, so off we went.

Ralph arrived at the house by 9:30 and we quickly loaded the truck and set off for a coffee, fuel and the start of the logging road. The truck needed a good run as it has been idle most of the year so far, it was up to the task and we made good time to Woodside. At the start of the logging road I switched the truck into 4x4 mode and we started up the rough road. I was concerned that we could be stopped short of the summit due to snow which may block our way up. The ski hill webcams were still showing snow at the 950m level which is where we would be. So as we drove up the road gaining elevation I was ever the more anxious as to what would be around the next turn, seeing numerous flows of water didn’t ease my anxiety any.

When we came to the final fork we still had seen no snow and I was now feeling much better, shortly into the last road segment we met a hiker coming down from the summit, that in itself was odd but we just continued up. The one advantage of doing the drive in April is the lack of leaves on the alder. The road was getting encased with the alder trees and being bare at this time made it a bit more open and easier to pick ones way along the road. Even so, we still managed to hit one tree hard enough it bent one of my antennas.

As we continued along the final road we did finally find some snow. There was a small patch of packed snow on the road but it only covered about a quarter of the road width and was easy to pass by. A second smaller patch was soon encountered and then we popped out from the alder tree tunnel and we were at the old abandoned radio site. We parked the truck and decided we would search for the true summit before operating, so we set off to the south with our gps’s in hand to locate the Google Earth summit location. We had around 250m to where the indicated spot was and that was through a forested area. Fortunately, only a short initial section had close packed trees, for most of the way it was open forest which made travel fairly easy.