N1CLC: 2020-01-12 Corte Madera and Los Pinos

Today, I’m shooting for a double summit. I conducted my annual hike to Corte Madeira and Los Pinos Mountain. This was one of the longer ones with a total of 11.3 miles and an elevation gain of about 2,362 feet. To do this one, I park about a mile and a half from a valley between the two mountains, go up one, and then come down and up the other.

I was wheels up at about 0730 this morning with a banana nut muffin and a double shot late. It was a beautiful clear day with no wind. The temperature at the trailhead was about 40F, perfect for a hike. The first 1.5 miles has an elevation gain of about 500 feet. By that time it had warmed up enough for me to remove my fleece and launch the final two miles to the Corte Madera summit.

Once on the summit, I setup, took some pictures for some nice ladies, they got one of me, and then setup my station. I ended up setting my radio gear up on a high point that turned out to be very popular. The ladies were also up there. The chatter was so loud I decided to wait for them to head back. Just about the time I got started on CW (Morse), some other ladies showed up. The audio noise was about S8, and another operator was calling CW on top of my frequency. So my ability to decode, which is already shit, was a bit of a disaster. I need to get use to handling a pileup. It’s hard when three+ people all answer your call at the same time :(. I did manage to muddle through a bunch of contacts and then I switched to SSB phone (voice) for the rest of the chasers on 20m. Just about the time I was switching over to 40m some other people showed up and I decided to bug out and head over to Los Pinos.

The route has an intersection where I could head back up to the Los Pinos summit. This year, I decided to use the road (the green line on the chart to the right) instead of the route I took last year under the power lines. This was a heck of a lot easier. It was a bit longer, but I didn’t mind that. Los Pinos summit has a fire lookout, which is closed this time of year, and it’s host to a massive antenna farm for repeaters and telco. With all the AC units and other gear up there the noise floor was very high, about an S5 to 7.

I decided to start my activation using CW on 40 meter. This is a good use of CW because it allows you to pickup incoming signals even though there is a lot of RF noise. My CW skills were a bit better here and the mountain was quickly activated.

I took some time to enjoy the views and then headed back down to the intersection and then to the car.

This was a very long day. I was on the road early and didn’t get home till about 6PM. I definitely got my exercise for the day, with 11.3 miles, 2,362 ft. of elevation gain. The weather was perfect for this outing so I’d say it was a perfect day.

Contacts

Date:12/Jan/2020 Summit:W6/CC-026 (Corte Madera Mountain) Call Used:N1CLC Points: 4 Bonus: 0 Delete

Time	Call	Band	Mode	Notes
19:25z	WW7D	14MHz	CW
19:35z	N4EX	14MHz	CW
19:38z	W0MNA	14MHz	CW
19:39z	W0ERI	14MHz	CW
19:39z	NN7M	14MHz	CW
19:42z	NW7E	14MHz	CW
19:44z	W5ODS	14MHz	CW
19:45z	NU7A	14MHz	CW
19:48z	VE7HI	14MHz	CW
19:50z	NS7P	14MHz	CW
19:52z	W4KRN	14MHz	SSB
19:58z	K7VK	14MHz	SSB
19:58z	K0LAF	14MHz	SSB

Date:12/Jan/2020 Summit:W6/SC-048 (Los Pinos Mountain) Call Used:N1CLC Points: 4 Bonus: 0 Delete

Time	Call	Band	Mode	Notes
22:15z	K6PLR	14MHz	SSB
22:18z	K6MXA	14MHz	SSB
22:26z	VA6CP	14MHz	SSB
22:28z	NO7ON	14MHz	SSB
22:29z	K6KM	7MHz	CW
22:37z	WU7H	7MHz	CW
22:39z	NG6R	7MHz	CW
22:40z	N7MQ	7MHz	CW
22:41z	KI6KU	7MHz	CW
22:43z	WW7D	7MHz	CW
22:46z	N6NKT	7MHz	CW
22:51z	K7MK	7MHz	CW
22:54z	N6MKW	7MHz	CW
22:56z	KH2TJ	7MHz	CW
22:59z	W5ODS	7MHz	CW