Taking a Friday off from the crazy world of bikes.

We headed out to do another Summits On The Air operation on two different summits. Summit one was VE6/HC-034 (Stoney Mountain) and summit two was VE6/HC-035 (Tunnel Mountain). We started out on Stony Mountian parking int he first main parking lot at MT Norquay. For this hike 90% of the elevation you get is from the switch backing road up to the parking lot. The trail was insanely icy and like usual I didn't have grippers. That being said we where able to get to the activation zone in about 35 minutes. I found nice sunny spot, and setup my gear. Band conditions where great, was getting mostly 57 signal reports from all my contacts. Getting 11 contacts from France to Arizona i got the contacts i needed to score the four points from this summit.

After packing up and slipping down the trail all the way back to the parking lot, we headed over to Banff town centre to get to the Tunnel Mountian trail head. We parked on the upper road, that was closed and walked the road to the half way parking spot. 95% of this trail was dry flowing us to get up very quickly. The last 5% was muddy and very icy and made for some unique hiking. I setup and dialled in my gear, getting two contacts quickly and then silence...

I struggled and struggled no contacts, on 20meter, on 40meter and even on 146.52FM. I was getting stressed. I swapped out my 20meter antenna over to a multi band antenna and jumped back on 20meter. I quickly got on more contact but then for 30-45 minutes had silence again. I was getting mad now, I just needed one more contact to get my points. After calling CQ and about to give up I got my contact. I was happy to pack up and get off Tunnel Mountian and head home for a cold beverage.

After chatting with some fellow SOTA activators I have come to find out the RF noise on Tunnel Mountian is horrible and that others have actually fully been skunked and not got the points. So thankfully I was able to get what I needed.

Onto the next adventure. 73.