2. Ham Radio

Monument Peak (W6/NS-061) SOTA Activation 2/6/2013

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I snapped this shot of Lake Tahoe while skiing down towards Nevada.
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I snapped this shot of Lake Tahoe while skiing down towards Nevada.

  • Monument Peak is along the southeastern edge of Heavenly Valley ski resort at 10,061 feet. To get to it in winter from Heavenly's California Lodge in South Lake Tahoe, ride these three lifts in order: Gunbarrel Express, Powder Bowl Express and Sky Express. You can also get to the Sky Express lift from Heavenly Village, the Boulder Lodge or the Stagecoach Lodge (all in Nevada) but I don't know the sequence of lifts you'd need to take to get to the final Sky Express lift.
  • From the top of the Sky Express lift, go left and start skiing down the Skyline Trail (purple line) northward toward the California/Nevada border. A few turns down, take off your skis and start hiking up onto the ridge. My BeginHike point is at 38.92192N, 119.90049W and it would be handy to have that as a waypoint in your GPS so that you don't end up skiing past it. In this screen capture, note the diagonal line labelled "Von Schmidt Line 1873", I'll write more about that later. This was once the CA/NV border and has an interesting history (Google it if you like). The blue lines are my GPS track log from the hike, and If you look closely you can see that I first tried a different route slightly to the north that ended up being blocked by boulders and trees. I had to ski and hike back down and try the other route a bit further to the south.
  • I'm about 1/3 of the way up my hike and this shot is looking southwest toward the top of the Sky Express lift that is on the skyline. The Skyline Trail ski run is a road that you can see winding down below the lift. It continues down and across this shot to the right, but is obscured by the trees and rocks I've already climbed up through.
  • Same shot as before, but zoomed out. The summit you see to the left is actually lower than Monument Peak although still above 10,000 feet per the topo map. For some reason it appears to be higher when you are looking up at them. Fortunately I had my GPS with me or else I may have climbed the wrong mountain!
  • Looking back down the icy ski boot trail from about halfway up. I had a hard time making it up this section because the tracks were frozen solid and slick, and I'd lost my rubber Cat Tracks (they slip onto the bottom off ski boots) on my aborted hike up the other route. Each step had to be carefully planned and executed, and I basically pulled myself up using my ski poles and whatever tree limbs and rocks I could grab onto. Crampons would have been really-really handy to have. I actually took this shot on the way back down, after this southwest-facing slope finally got some sun and softened up a bit.
  • You can finally see the Monument Peak summit when you make it up to this open and flattish meadow. After struggling with the ice on the trail below, it was nice to be able to tromp along through open and obstacle-free snow.
  • Looking back down toward Lake Tahoe from up above the meadow.
  • The summit is somewhere at the top of these boulders. I estimated it was 50 vertical feet to the top of what I could see from this point, but I wasn't sure if there was higher ground beyond. My GPS was saying 60-70 vertical feet to the summit so I think there must be another boulder or two beyond these. There was no way I could climb this final section with my slick-bottomed downhill ski boots, so I tried traversing over to the steeper east slope that is supposed to be snow covered (as per the info on SummitPost.org) and would be easier to climb.
  • Unfortunately this line of boulders and trees, perched right along the top of the east slope, kept me from safely going any further. Rats! Oh well, I was already within the 80' activation zone so I decided to setup and operate from here.
  • The blue line is my hiking track and the turquois & white dashed line is the activation zone. My operating position ended up being on the 10,000 foot contour (67 vertical feet below the summit) per this topo map, and I was disappointed that I couldn't make it all the way to the top. However... through sheer dumb luck my operating position ended up right on the 1873 Von Schmidt Line which is pretty cool! I didn't plan that, wasn't even cognizant of it until I downloaded my GPS track log and was curious as to what the diagonal red line on the topo map was.
  • My operating spot on the 1873 Von Schmidt Line. I'm glad that I decided to buy a Buddipole Shockcord Mast for supporting the AlexLoop during winter activations. The snow was deep and unpacked, I was able to easily cram the mast down into the snow. I ended up using the entire length of the mast.
  • My skis are still strapped to my pack and aren't being used to support the mast. I shoved the tails down into the snow to keep my pack upright and out of the powder.
  • The AlexLoop in all its glory, beaming E-W. For details on how it connects to the Buddipole Shockcord Mast, see my Mt. Pluto activation album.
  • When I did my activation of Scott Peak, my butt got wet from sitting in the snow. To keep that from happening again, I bought a cheap Coleman foam camping pad and whacked off a piece to carry in my pack as a seat. I'd already stowed the KX3, ear buds and keyer paddles back in the case when I took this shot.
  • Me standing next to my operating spot with the camera looking southwest toward Point 9881 (not a SOTA summit) behind me. It was a beautiful and warm morning. There was absolutely no wind, not even a breath, which surprised the heck out of me. My hair is soaked with sweat as I'd kept my helmet on for the entire climb.
  • My SOTAWatch spots. I was automatically spotted by my RBNGate software each time I changed frequency and one of the Reverse Beacon Network (RBN) automated skimmers heard me calling CQ. Alan NM5S was activating on snowshoes and skis out in New Mexico at the same time as me, but I missed him for a summit-to-summit, even though Bill W4ZV let me know he was on. Fred KT5X (a.k.a. WS0TA) was also on a summit and it looks like he started up right around the time I was finishing.
  • When I had finished operating and was back down into ski mode, I stopped and hammed it up for one of the Epic Mix photographers. That's Lake Tahoe in the background. The camera is looking northwest and the large mountains across the lake on the left side are in Desolation Wilderness. Several of them are SOTA summits.
  • Another shot that the Epic Mix photographer took.
  • I snapped this shot of Lake Tahoe while skiing down towards Nevada.
  • Another shot I took from a ski run, this is looking down into the Minden/Gardnerville area of Nevada.
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