Stats:
6.8 miles roundtrip
1761 ft elevation gain
Start elevation: 3463 ft
End elevation: 4962 ft

2011-09-24 Palisades Peak W7/RS-008 CN96EW77

Start elev.: 6111 ft (1863 m)
Max elev.: 7083 ft (2159 m)
Total ascent: 3078 ft (938 m)
Trip odometer: 9.3mi (14.967km) Up: 4.8mi (7.725km) Down: 4.5mi (7.242km)
Total time: 11h07m Up: 4h Down: 2h45m
Video

This is probably the easiest summit to locate in Idaho.  It is a volcanic dome that rises 2500 feet in the middle of the Snake River Lava Plain. You can't miss it.  I accessed it from the ARCO approach, a drive of about 20 miles across a dusty BLM desert road which brought me to the base.  Here I unloaded my ATV and rode up the summit trail which is 5 miles one way. A really fine and popular ATV trail ride.  The trail ends at the very peak where there is a viewing platform and stinky outhouse.

This was really a spur-of-the-moment thing.  I saw the weather was going to be great on Friday, cleared a day off with the boss, and checked over my "portable station": My NorCal NC-20, EFHW tuner and 34' of wire.  Cobbled up a Li-ion battery, and looked over some summit possiblities.  I settled on West Tiger as not being too far away, or too ambitious for a first attempt. (But I wanted to do more than a 1-pointer!)  So I put an alert on SOTAwatch, and set 11:00am local as a start time.

As we headed back from Lakeview Peak earlier in the day, Taylor and I took a detour to go by Bandwidth Mountain. This two-point summit is not significant enough to have an official name, but like many in the Washington SOTA database, it has been assigned a cute amateur-radio name to avoid a simple numbering system. Our outdated topo map software showed a road leading in the direction of the summit, but stopping a couple miles short. However, some satellite reconnaissance ahead of time showed that the road actually went much farther, to just below the base of the summit.

UPDATE (as of June 18, 2017): Weyerhaeuser now requires a recreational permit in order to access this area.

The gate just past the Mount Bachelor ski area on the Cascade Lakes Highway opened just two weeks ago Friday - there is still plenty of roadside snow on the five miles from the ski area to the Devil's Lake trailhead. There's some shoulder cleared near the trail and a bit of space at the entrance to the trailhead parking lot - we bivyed there in the vehicle for the night and got ourselves up at 4am for a 5am start. There is no trail sign or anything to indicate where the trail starts - we scoped it out for bootprints in the snow during the last of the daylight the night before.

This summit is a fairly easy trip from the Eugene, OR area.  The 4.1 mile drive up to the trailhead is steep in places, but passible with a standard car.  The short (quarter mile) hike to the top is easy, and the top is broad and generally flat.

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.

After attending Dan and Taylor's (KK7DS & K7TAY) seminar at SEAPAC, I was inspired to give SOTA a try.