ZL3/CB-527 Dumblane July 2021

 A weekend in Hanmer with Mark ZL3AB and Adele provided the chance to do a joint activation with Mark. When planning the trip we realised that although we started on this SOTA obsession on the same day, 3 years and >200 activations later we hadn't yet operated together on a mountain! Time to fix that!

Saturday dawned fine and frosty - very frosty! We started from the Jacks Pass saddle at -1 Deg C with a stiff breeze - lots of layers needed! A nice track, marked with waratahs but not shown on any maps :-) It was telling that as we sat on the summit, we could see 11 other cars in the carpark, all up Mt Isobel... We only saw two other humans the whole day, just how we like it.

Panorama from a really great summit

Mark has written an excellent Blog on his first activation of this summit - linked off the SOTA Mapping Project page.

He also created a video of our activation, you can watch it here (Youtube).

We made good time to the top and set up my newly built 7 Band EFHW (60/40/30/20/17/15/10) It worked very well and provided over 50 QSOs in the couple of hours we were up there. The KX2 tuner also pulled it in on 12m.

Mark operating in his orange beanie. Hanmer Plain and Waiau River in the background

The weather was great so we stayed for the UTC rollover and worked John ZL3MR on his second summit then headed down to have a beer, watch the Olympic Cycling and reflect on a great day.

View back towards the Southern alps

Getting there: Drive up Clarence Valley Road to the Jacks Pass summit carparking area. Look for the track start on the Western side of the area. It's marked with Waratahs but there is no signage :-) I have uploaded a GPX track to the SOTA Tracks site. Keep right, at the Chatterton River tracks sign, i.e. don't veer left down to the river. Here's a Google Earth view of our track:

Time: it took us an hour to ascend. There are two steep-ish bits but it's a nice walk.

Repeaters: Didn't try any but 705 should be fine - we worked 2m Simplex to Christchurch and 70cm S2S to the Banks Peninsula.