Mt Somers ZL3/CB-387 October 2021

This is a mountain I have had my eye on for a while - quite literally. We have enjoyed holidays at the Mt Somers Domain camping ground over recent years and looked up at this spectacular 1688m peak.

View from the Mt Somers Domain camp

 Feeling that I was now fit enough to tackle it and with a good forecast, we booked in to stay for Labour weekend. Dave ZL3DRN and Julie decided to join us and give their caravan a pre-summer shakedown too.

Saturday morning dawned fine and frosty so we set off around 7am for the Sharplin Falls Reserve end of the track near Staveley. The plan being to complete a traverse of the mountain and come down the other side to the Woolshed Creek carpark. A longer exit but gentler on the knees and an opportunity to see more of the mountain.

17 cars in the carpark upon arrival is not usually a good sign but, as it turned out, only 3 parties (5 people) were headed to the summit.

It's a climb that never really lets up, over Hookey Knob to the summit track junction and then a steep climb up a spur to the ridge and along to the summit. Half a protein bar at the junction and the other half at the 1400m point saw me right to push on to the summit. Plenty of snow along the ridge but the summit was reasonably clear. 

An incredible sense of achievement - my highest summit to date. 

It's a very exposed and harsh environment up here!

Amazing view to the West, Mt Cook ZL3/CB-001 just left of center 

The obligatory panorama!

OK, enough sightseeing, we have a SOTA activation to do! A leisurely setup (as usual, we were early) saw us use the summit structure to support the pole with the 66 foot Doublet atop. The other three summiteers were having their lunch near the trig having already signed the summit book so we weren't in their way.

Dave ZL3DRN operating HF. Summit book is in the "letterbox"

We got the HF gear set up and worked the Christchurch gang on 2m FM with big signals. A nice surprise was a S2S with Ian ZL3GIG on Coopers Knob ZL3/CB-806. We were amazed when he said it was cold and windy there - we had 18 degrees, a light NW breeze and sun!

On to HF and we worked our way up the bands, starting on 60m as usual. Because we were in Hakatere Conservation Park ZLFF-0026, the Australian WWFF gang were keen to chase us resulting in some unfamiliar calls in the log on 20m including a Park to Park with VK2TER/P in VKFF-1331 Jilliby State Conservation Area.

New item for the pack - Cramp Stop!! I had a massive cramp of both legs while sitting on the ground operating - thankfully the electrolyte sachet in my drink bottle had some Magnesium in it. A quick swig and it started to ease. We then changed the operating position to the top of the wooden rail!

The bands were a bit flaky so we packed up HF, had lunch, worked the locals on 2m after UTC rollover and set off on the next part of the adventure - navigating ourselves down off the mountain to the pickup area. There's no track down this way but Dave had prepared a route on the GPS. We shortly discovered a series of cairns along our planned route, great minds think alike! After an uneventful descent, we intercepted the Woolshed Creek Hut Track as planned and headed down to the carpark via the Rhyolite Track, arriving at 4:30pm. 

A big day with 1353m of vertical gain, 14.2km travelled with 5 hours moving time.

ZL3/CB-387 Mount Somers
Height: 1688m ASL
Directions: From Staveley, follow the signs to Sharplin Falls Reserve. Follow the marked track (South Face) to the Summit Junction, turn right and it's a poled route to the top.
Time to summit: 5 hours (DOC). We took 3 hours 20 min (1288m ascent, 5.9km, Average grade 21%)
Summit marker: Trig
Land access permission: Not required, Hakatere Conservation Park
Repeater access: Good into Christchurch area repeaters
Cellphone access: Patchy Vodafone and Skinny 4G/Txt from the summit