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Three First-Activations in Northern Idaho
Most winters necessitate late-May to early-June starts for bagging some of these deep-in-the-forest peaks in Northern Idaho. Negotiating the mountains themselves generally isn’t too bad, but given the forest road conditions it’s just not possible to get close enough to access things, unless you’ve got a snow machine. My Honda Element doesn’t quite cut it.…
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Monte Has Entered the Chat
February was a wild month. Within the first week we had our water heater fail–rather catastrophically–and flooded the downstairs (which includes ou r bedroom). That’s ongoing, Also had a bit of a vehicular hiccup with the SOTA rig, a 20-year-old Honda Element, that cost a pretty penny. But thankfully it’s running great with 230k miles.…
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2025 SOTA Recap
My second year of Summits on the Air was a solid effort. Along with dialing in my radio kit and just straight pumping up my numbers, the magnitude of mountains tackled was generally more impressive and technical. I bagged my first 10-pointer this year… three of them in three different states, in fact. Also this…
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New Year Thoughts (Doing Hard Things)
It’s about 30 degrees outside and I’m currently in my sleeping bag in a cabin at Field Springs State Park in SE Washington. Earlier today we celebrated the end of 2025 with a hike, some snacks at altitude, and a summit activation (for me, at least). When the year officially rolls over (00:00UTC) all of…
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Arizona Madness
Summit One Most years, the first Saturday in October is the Ten Point Madness SOTA event for W7A (Arizona). Operators head out across the state to get on top of a 10-point summit where they’ll rack up a ton of simplex S2S contacts with each other before getting onto HF to chat with chasers further…
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Mount Saint Helens
The summit that started it all. When 2024 began I had no knowledge of SOTA and only a vague familiarity (but zero interest in) ham radio. For whatever reason, YouTube began to feed me some video about ham radio and a volcano. I vehemently ignored it, perhaps even clicking the “not interested” option, but the…
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Blue Mountains: Misery Peak W7W/WE-003 & Garfield County H.P. W7W/WE-002
This is a bit of a scouting mission as I’d only been to the Blue Mountains a couple of times and those were the pre-summit hunting days. Two relatively easy looking targets: Mount Misery W7W/WE-003 and the Garfield County High Point W7W/WE-002. Happy to report that the Umatilla National Forest roads were surprisingly wide a…
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Traverse Ridge W7O/NE-017
A tough week resulted in the hasty decision to head into the Wallowas of Eastern Oregon. We arrived at the Hurricane Creek Campground just before sunset on a Thursday evening to set up camp and crawl into the tent. Up early Friday we made our way to the “trailhead” along Lime Quarry Rd 45.37808, -117.35148…
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A Week in Switzerland
In July made a quick escape to see some mountains of a different variety. Much time was spent hiking, train hopping, walking the streets and looking up, mouth agape. Just incredible beauty in this land. A little bit of time was spent in Zurich and Lucerne but most of my days were on the trails…
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Test Roll: Leica M4
It’s 3AM and I’m wide awake. In an hour I have a ride to catch to the airport where the long travel day to Zurich begins (more on that later). This is simply an exploratory trip, hopefully with some good photo opportunities. I’m bringing along my Bronica 6×6 and was planning on toting one of…
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Peakbagging the Kettle Falls Range
Northwest of Spokane lies a pocket of summits I’ve been eyeballing for months—about a dozen SOTA-qualifying peaks in the 6000–7000 ft range. With some free time and an itch to chase points and elevation, I mapped out a three-day backpacking trip in early June aiming to activate at least four eight-pointers. With almost zero familiarity…
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Idaho FA: Grandmother Mtn W7I/NI-085 (and Mark’s Butte W7I/NI-092)
A couple of Northern Idaho’s smallish summits that, in an earlier spring attempt were blocked by snow, are a bit of a long forest road drive to access. As you start to climb above 5300ft, FR301 becomes more rough than a standard SUV can handle. I parked my Honda at 47.01588, -116.06868 and walked the…
Outliving the bastards one hard-earned beer at a time.