Activating Mt. Cheam

Club members Ralph and Eric were joined by John Bell for a hike up Mt. Cheam to activate the summit in the summits-on-the-air program. We all me at Eric's home at 6:30am to drive in his truck to the trailhead on Cheam. The drive was fine until the final road, the forestry road winding its way along the Chipmunk valley to the parking area was extremely rough with huge cross ditches and many deep potholes but we made it through. We got to the parking area a bit before 9 to find it almost full! After parking and getting geared up we set off on the trail, It was a lovely day for a hike, not too hot and with broken clouds. We made good time along the trail though rest stops were needed at several points. We arrived at the summit a bit before noon and there we took a short rest before setting up radios. John erected his small 20m dipole as an inverted V right on the summit, Eric got his 2m yaggi in place and was soon making contacts across the Fraser valley. Ralph meanwhile wandered a back down along the ridge and setup his antenna a bit lower where there was a bit more space.

All three of us made enough contacts to gain the points for the summit so it was a good day. The antennas caused many to take interest in our activities and so we had a good chance to explain the fun of SOTA. By 1pm the contacts seemed to die off and so we packed up the equipment and started back down the slope. Our return took about 90 minutes so we actually made excellent time in both directions.

See http://www.scenicart.ca/content/mt-cheam-re-activated for morre photos and a longer story.