New Years day 2024 dawned fine and all was ready for my planned Mt William SOTA activation on the West Coast. Just before I was due to leave camp, I happened across a news item that said the access road to Denniston had been closed by a slip and people were being rescued from the other side...
 |
| I still went to check, not what you want to see... |
Time to quickly re-plan, drat, no other accessible SOTA peaks in the area so it would have to be something else. I spotted Lake Rochfort in the Mt Rochfort Conservation Area and decided that would do.
It's a hydro lake, the walk up takes you via the 4.2 MW powerhouse/tail race and up the historic access track, complete with Totara steps in places. |
| Tailrace |
 |
| Old Totara steps still in good condition |
It's a nice walk and you soon arrive that the lake to be greeted with a shelter and picnic table! Well, it would be rude not to use it so I got set up using the shelter to bungee my pole, turned on the radio to be greeted with S9+ of QRM (from the solar regulators I expect).
 |
| Too good to be true... |
Quick pack up and head to the SE end of the lake, hopefully quieter there. Only marginally as it turned out. Tweaked the KX2 nose blanker and away we went.
Given that I had alerted for a SOTA summit, I didn't want to cause confusion by calling CQ so just chased the activators on SSB each side of the UTC rollover.
After getting John ZL3MR on his Goat summit (and fortuitously giving him his 4th contact to qualify as a Goat) I packed up and headed back to the car. Not quite a SOTA summit but a nice walk on a good day.
Good walk, 6km and 426m vertical, lots of SOTA summits that are easier than this!
Access is a small white sign on left about 20m before the bridge on Powerhouse Road (about 7km North of Westport). There's a parking area on the South side of the road. The track is well marked/used.
Cell service was fine with Spark/Skinny
