Despite a propensity of warm sunny weather lately, Saturday brought dark overcast skies and the threat of rain in the northern Puget Sound for our Summit to Summit party.  That didn't discourage our activators. 

On Mt Erie W7W/SK-169,  we had a team of four; myself W7TAO, Tom KI7KN and my two son's: Mason 13 and Tanner 10.  Most of the contacts made for W7TAO were with Tanner or Mason at the mic.  Tom made his first official SOTA activation with 100% S2S contacts.  Not a bad way to start! 

Stack Rock has become more accessible over the last few years due to private land being converted to public access.  A private donation made it possible for the Land Trust of the Treasure Valley to purchase private land around and on the way to Stack Rock.  More information here at this LINK.  The trail is widely used by hikers, mountain bikers and is now used by those that have drank the SOTA Kool-Aid!

The payoff for this relatively short non-technical summit is huge!  Fantastic 360° views from the summit.  Closest prominent peaks include, Mount Baring, Glacier Peak and the Monte Cristo Group.  I'd been to the summit of Beckler several times prior to learning of SOTA. I recalled the location of Beckler Peak was quite remote; there are no major towns within a 40 mile radius of the peak, and, Beckler is surrounded by many higher peaks. This trip was an experiment; given the aforementioned hindrances, would it be possible make contacts on 2 meters?

Nice weather, good company and a successful Activation (including a summit to summit contact with VE7DB on VE7/FV-024) were high points.  The route was not terribly ascetic, and the summit block is a large pile of Basalt talus.  We elected to operate from the false summit to the southeast of the summit block. This was a joint Activation with Tim Nair, KG7EJT.  Joining us was Masako, Tim's wife and Sharon, my wife.  Rounding out the crew was Dexter the SOTA Dog.

UPDATE July 2020: Elk Rock has been posted "No Trespassing" by Weyerhauser. See sign below.

...

...

This was my first attempt to activate a summit and all of this is a first attempt in terms of planning, tools used, the template I used to write this, etc. Let me know  if there are other things you want to know about for future summits.

Reprise on Jester Mountain, exactly 8 months later.  We originally activated Jester on September 3, 2014.  This time I returned with a different crew, and in a different season: Spring.  The flowers were out, the views were incredible as usual, and the weather was sunny, with a slight cooling breeze which kept it very pleasant.  Good company, successful Activation and sections of beautiful flower blooms made for a very nice outing.

This was our third hike to Elbow Peak; this time it was sunny!  Wow! Incredible views of the east side of all the Snoqualmie Pass peaks, and the mighty Stuart Range. We only saw 2 other couples the entire day, so a very peaceful and beautiful hike in the Teanaway region.  Only a few minor patches of snow at the 5000 foot level, and these were in the shady areas. No trouble passes them with only hiking poles.