Forested Summit

A couple years ago William, W6BIL, reached out to me through a local facebook hiking page because I had a bunch of free local hiking books to give away and he saw I was a ham. He too was a ham but had not been operating for years. We touched base and I found out he hiked Nugget Butte fairly regularly but was not a summiter. I got info from William on the legality of hiking, he never had an issue but I eventually gave Gold Hill a call.

The weather this week was looking like it would be good, so I wanted to get in my March summit. I wanted to make it a challenge of some sort, so I decided to go for my first first activation. The Olympic Peninsula has a fair number of unactivated hills still, and a lot of them are on USFS land. I started exploring and found Peak 1620.

You can access Meridian Mountain if you purchase a Weyerhaeuser permit https://recreation.weyerhaeuser.com. You will need the “Longview – St Helens” one. The permit is valid for a year and gets you a map that you can load into an app on your phone as well as a key to the Recreation Access Gates.  Take I5 N to exit 42, then Ostrander Road to Rec Permit Access Gate 010. Take Road 010 to Road 049 to summit.  The AZ is off the road, the true summit is densely treed.  Summit pic on SOTA Atlas.

Due to the recent relocation of Frog Lake Buttes from one butte to the other earlier this year, I was anxious to do another double activation on New Year's Eve.  See my previous report for details on the route.  The only difference is you must continue on from the radio towers down to the saddle and on up the other butte.  Still very worth it for 14 pts.

1470 is an unnamed summit near Granite Falls, WA. It is an easy 3 mile walk (6 mile R/T) up a good gravel road. Around 1000' of gain. This is a good candidate for a mountain bike trip. Some nice views of Pilchuck near the top.

Ball Mountain is a relatively easy drive-near summit in the Oregon coast range, east of Lincoln City. Your passenger vehicle will get you close to the summit, followed by a short walk and then a bushwhack, neither of which is challenging. The summit area itself is treed in with ample space to set up and plenty of trees for antennas.

Smith Mountain is one of several two-point summits accessible from Weyerhaeuser rec permit access gate 6110.  For permit information see: https://recreation.weyerhaeuser.com. You will need the “Longview – St Helens” one.  For this three-summit “expedition” I drove to within a few miles of each summit, parked and mountain biked to each of the summits.  The Smith Mountain AZ extends to the road that passes nearby.  I did not bushwhack up to the treed “true” summit on this one and activated from the road. 

This is a drive-up summit into the activation zone.  A couple of concrete blocks and a tall steel antenna mast indicate the site was a possible old Timber Company repeater station when the land was under different ownership. The summit ownership is now US Forest Service. The road access is good for most vehicles down to a ‘Subaru-class’.  Some maps and web descriptions term this summit Lolo Springs Lookout.

Drive-up: The access road terminates within the activation zone and an 80’ walk tops the summit.

Elevation gain from vehicle: Less than 40’

Summary - Crazy Hills, along with Lone Butte, is on the western boundary of Indian Heaven Wilderness, near the Lone Butte Sno Park. The drive is mostly on paved roads by way of Carson (Wind River and Meadow Creek) and includes a 1.5 mi hike (mostly cross country). Drive time from Portland is about ninety minutes. The summit hike follows a ridge and requires a short steep climb to the high point.  APRS is good, ATT cell is servicable, two meter contacts are a struggle.

Medicine Point is a popular US Forest Service rental lookout.  The hike is pleasant on a well-maintained good-grade trail, FS #181.  I set up SOTA operation a couple of hundred feet away from the lookout to not disturb a young couple that had rented it. Much of the southerly ridge from the trail junction to the lookout is within the activation zone. A highlight of seen wildlife, numerous mule deer and Clark’s nutcrackers was a very dark silver-fox hunting golden mantle squirrels and chipmunks in a large boulder field.