Taylor (K7TAY) and I went back to the Northern Columbia River Gorge area for yet another four-point summit in Southern Washington today. The weather was forecast for 70F in the valleys and clear skies; we were not disappointed.

We followed the instructions for the "short version" which totalled about 4.4 miles. Starting from a dirt road, we followed the trail up through dense forest until we reached an old 4x4 road which led us up to the saddle between two peaks. On the lesser one stood a microwave site and associated tower. On the major peak we saw a fantastic stack of boulders:

At the base, the remains of a crude staircase led to the top, formed by small bits of hand-poured concrete between boulders to keep them together. About two-thirds of the way to the top was a very small landing before reaching the remains of a lookout tower's foundation. The top is fairly small and precarious, so we decided to set up on the landing where there was more space. Here's a vew from the top of where we set up:

We arrived at about the same time as another couple planning to eat lunch, so we set up our gear and then waited for them to head down before cranking up the radio and disturbing their peace.

We decided to take the QRO radio with us today (an Icom IC-7000) and we operated at 50W, a nice departure from the 5W we have been running lately. I spotted myself via APRS (the data coverage was too spotty to do it on the cell phone) and I had about five people come back to my ver first call. Taylor and I both worked about a dozen contacts before we called it quits. The summit is a popular place and we didn't want to hog all the space for too long. Before we headed down, I snapped this killer shot of Mt. Adams:

This was a really nice hike and a great summit. The rocky landing required some creative engineering to set up my monopole mast and stretch out sixteen feet of counterpoise wire, but we made it work. The conditions and chasers were top notch. I highly recommend this summit for those looking for a good four-point trip with a good hike.