Good Parking At Trailhead

When I visited Northern Idaho, I also had the chance to activate this summit.

The route to the summit starts on Hwy 95, turning East onto Blacktail Rd.  This is followed around until it once again turns East onto Little Blacktail Rd.  Then follow the pit run (larger gravel) covered road to the top.

There are 3 or 4 repeater towers up there so I parked next to the large propane tank on the southernmost one and headed south to put some distance between us.  Even so, 20m was very noisy.  I didn't have a problem on 40m or 15m.

I recently had the occasion to spend some time in Northern Idaho and while there I activated this summit.

The road up to the summit starts from Hwy 95, heading East on Hwy 54 and North on N Perimeter and East again on Bayview Rd to N Cherokee Rd and north following that up.  N Cherokee Rd is also shown as FS 297 on Google Maps.  The road condition is not great with many ruts down the middle.  I had to straddle the ruts in many cases.  A high-clearance vehicle is probably required.

The road is in good condition. It is driveable by a Prius. They also ran a brush mower all the way up the road very recently. The corridor is nicely cleared with all the attendant vegetative carnage 12 feet on either side of the road. Sight lines were good, too. 

You can drive right into the activation zone where there is a nice, flat clearing with a fire pit in it. There is plenty of space to set up a 67 foot wire antenna. 

This is a quite decent set of forest roads up to a peak that'll require just a little bushwhacking.

Take the Inkom Idaho Ext off of I-15 (approx.13 miles south of Pocatello Id). Going through the town of Inkom, take Rapid Creek Rd to Inman Rd. which will be on your right.  This road turns into FS road 018 and goes to the Trail Head, (42.50.15 N, 112.10.47W).

This Nevada peak was first activated on 29 November 2021 by KJ7WGM along with Hanks Peak. This is a very straight forward ½-mile hike with only 287 feet of elevation gain.  Follow the ridge line from where you park and head to a false summit.  You can walk over the summit or skirt around it on the south (recommended). The summit is very rocky and today was extremely windy.  I was able to find a rock outcropping that protected me from the wind on the NW side of the summit. There is an old fence post to attach an antenna mast to.

This is one of those activations that I will most likely not repeat! The peak was first activated on 29 November 2021 by KJ7WGM along with China Mountain. The hike is a bushwhack of only .35 miles, but with 627 feet of elevation gain, half of which is through a boulder field and thick brush. The last portion is climbing up a rock/boulder wall.  It is easy enough to find a way up, but it is not what I would call easy.  The summit has 360-degree views of the north Great Basin vast emptiness.

AA6XA first activated Thunder Mountain on 14 October 2017. His write-up is a great description of the area and his ascent from the east of the mountain.  You can find the link to his write-up on the SOTAmaps Summit page. Ignoring his mention of “cliffs” I opted to plan a route from the west. The directions below describe the drive to the beginning of the west ascent. I knew the climb would be steep, but it would only be around a half mile (.53 to be exact).  This is a total bushwhack from bottom to top.

Mount Pisgah is one of two Mount Pisgahs in Oregon, this one is near Prineville, the other near Eugene. The one near Eugene is a nice hike, this one is a tedious drive up.

The map shows several ways to get there. We drove on forest road 22 past Walton Lake. The pavement ends a bit after the lake. There is a connector road 150 and then we were on Summit Road, aka 2630.

The rode gets interesting at (44.46717, -120.25927). We continued on 2630 here where it splits with 450.

Wizard Island was on my “Must Do” list since I learned it was a SOTA summit and it did not disappoint. I’d highly recommend it to anyone who is in the park doing some of the other summits or just making a special trip as we did. Plan for 5 hours from start to finish, 30 mins on the boat and 3 hours on the island plus hiking in and out of the boat docks. The total hike was about 4.5 miles from the parking lot down to the ramp, up to the summit and back and back up to the parking lot with approximately 1400ft elevation gain.