The forestry road is a good one, suitable for 2WD vehicles with care. There is a locked gate but about 100m before this, the public track veers off left and climbs steeply. Don't take your car up here! The road is suitable for high clearance 4WD vehicles and skilled drivers only! Lots of scouring on corners etc. Francie was staying with the car so I parked in the track entrance and set off on foot. If leaving your vehicle, there's an area to park it about 300m back down the road.
View from the track, looking south down Port Underwood
It's a fairly easy walk up the road to the locked gate which prevents public vehicle access to the transmission tower site. Climb over the metal stile at the left end and continue up the road to the tower. It's about 30 minutes to this point.
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| Gate to the tower and summit |
| Entrance to the summit track is over the rock in centre of view |
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| Climb up the rock and you'll find the track! |
The track up the ridge is unmarked but well used and quite distinct. Soon you come to a clearing and a few meters further reveals the summit with a disused tower base.
As the wind was fairly brisk and cool, I set up on the lee side of the clearing and ran the 41' UnunTenna up with the pole bungeed to a tree. This is another bush-clad summit.
I wanted to work Wynne ZL2ATH who was holed up in his cabin in the Orongorongo Valley across Cook Strait. we tried 2m simplex but no joy. I also put out a general call on the Belmont 2m repeater that I was looking for simplex contacts on 146.5 but no calls. Wynne heard me weakly on 40m CW so we tried 80m which resulted in an easy QSO. That done, I saw Soren ZL1SKL spotted so called him for a nice S2S. Great signals on 40m up and down the country and across the Tasman on 20m. Also managed a SSB QSO with David ZL3DRN who hastily erected his SOTA gear BYOTA-style.
Mark ZL3AB reported he was running late to his summit so I packed up and headed down. A great day on a nice hill. You could very easily do both Kahikatea and MB-286 in a couple of hours.
Getting there: Use my ZL3/MB-286 instructions and instead of parking, turn left onto dirt road. Follow until you see the road fork and head uphill. Park in the clearing about 200m back (another road heads off South here) and walk up the road, taking the LH fork. Make sure you park in a safe spot, lots of logging trucks through here!
Repeater: Belmont 147.1 ok, others not tried.
Time: 40 minutes from the fork.
GPX track uploaded to the SOTA Mapping site.
