Putney Mountain could be a minimalists activation dream if you live in Southern Vermont - it was for me as the B&B we stayed during my visit was just ten minutes from the trailhead - only a few miles outside of Putney, Vermont.

From the trailhead an easy 200 feet of elevation gain over a mile and a half of wooded trail leads to a lovely summit clearing with great views, nice rocks to sit on and trees to fling antennas into. For airline travel I left as much behind as I could and so only had a 20M antenna and a key and the FT-817 internal battery and thus used only 2.5W. I was hoping to get a string into a tree to pull the end-fed half-wave up - it only took three tries and a few minutes of untangling. (Maybe I could leave the fishing pole behind more often.)

The background sound of 20M was quite different than the quiet I experience on the Left Coast - QRN from thunderstorms many miles away peppered the background. However, that didn't interfere with hearing decent signals from across an ocean. In Oregon I think of VE1 and VE2 as DX - from Vermont that morning it was CT1BQH, G4ELZ and DL1DVE - pretty exciting - plus early risers N1EU and W9FHA to help me qualify the summit.

There is good beta on the hike here - www.franklinsites.com/hikephotos/Vermont/putneymtn-2007-0107.php