This weekend I completed four SOTA summits, saving the biggest for last. For Whernside, I hiked in from the roadhead at SD 763 793 up to the summit along the “Three Peaks Walk” (SD760816, SD755825, SD740823) making this hike about 13 km total with an ascent of about 445 meters. There are a couple of route options for Whernside and a common alternative would be go to “straight up the side” up the path between SD739790 and SD734802. There’s little difference in distance but the latter route is steeper. But interestingly, both routes are covered by Google Street View these days!
Having hiked up Whernside a bunch of times, I know that it can be quite exposed – and in poor weather can be a tough climb. In particular at the top the wind was very high on the day and would have made making contact on the radio very difficult. However there are two summit shelters which face in opposite directions so you can generally get out of the wind, unless the summit is particularly busy. That said, being one of the “Yorkshire 3 Peaks” it certainly can get busy at the top.
The last time I did this summit was on a warm and bright bank holiday, and the whole route up was packed with people. This time around however, it was a windy and cold Autumn day and there were far fewer people, and no doubt thanks to the wind they weren’t staying at the top for more than a few minutes.
I called CQ SOTA at 11:20 and made six quick contacts. I also saw another station alert that they would be on a summit nearby at approximately 12:00 so tried to hold on, but sadly didn’t make the summit to summit! I held on until 12:15 but it seems the other station didn’t get set up until after I’d started my decent – so I missed out on those bonus points this time!
Successes
I’ve got no complaints after this activation, with it being my fourth activation in three days I was just happy to complete it. It’s also funny that I’ve been fussing with my HF radio for SOTA activations, trying to optimise for weight – and then I go and do four activations in a row with just my handheld!
Failures
I held on for the summit to summit for so long only to miss it at the last minute. I had kind of mentally made a decision that I was going to begin descending at 12:15 and that’s what I did – but I should have thought that since Whernside’s summit is so flat, I could have kept the handheld turned on for the first part of my descent and may have in fact heard the other station start their activation before I officially left the activation zone. It’s disappointing to miss an easy S2S contact, but I still think it’s sensible to have a specific time for your descent for safety reasons. Of course whilst it seems I missed out on the contact by only a few minutes, I was basing my actions only on the SOTA alerts page – and I could have been up there all night waiting for the contact had the other people call the activation off for the weather, or any other reason.
Excuse the boring activation photo – it was taken whilst hiding from the wind in the summit shelter!