Mt Loch and Mt Hotham – 9 July 2016

 

Loch car park at the start of the track

Loch car park at the start of the track

Once again it was time for the family school holiday trip to Mt Hotham. This year the snow gods had been a little kinder than last (see my winter hike last year) and actually provided about 50cm of cover. This is barely adequate for downhill skiing, but plenty for cross country and so I broke out the skis and followed a well trodden path to Mt Loch from the Loch car park.

Mt Loch looming out of the fog

Mt Loch looming out of the fog

The weather this time was largely overcast with low cloud passing through creating foggy conditions some of the time. If it had been white-out conditions, I would have cancelled, but there was sufficient visibility to make navigation easy and an improving forecast.

Limited snow, but adequate for cross-country skiing

Limited snow, but adequate for cross-country skiing

 

 

The trip out was a little harder than normal as the 4WD tracks that are normally groomed for cross-country skiing had not been done and had actually had a snow groomer chew up the path making the snow much harder to ski.

 

The operating position and near end of the 5 band EFHW antenna

The operating position and near end of the 5 band EFHW antenna

One end of the EFHW antenna

One end of the EFHW antenna

On reaching the summit I set up the station in the usual way. This time I’d brought my short 5m squid pole as I knew it would be sufficient mounted on top of the cairn. In previous visits, I’d used the metal pipe set into the top of the cairn as a convenient squid pole mount. Unfortunately someone has jammed rocks down this pipe completely blocking it. I managed to wedge the squid pole next to the pipe in the top of the cairn anyway.

There was a light but cold wind blowing, so I broke out the Bothy bag which kept me toasty warm during the activation.

The trail intersection on the edge of the Mt Hotham resort

The trail intersection on the edge of the Mt Hotham resort

Mt Loch is in the Alpine National Park

Mt Loch is in the Alpine National Park

I made a total of 10 contacts on 40m and a further 2 on 20m. The band conditions on 40m were quite poor with virtually no NVIS propagation, but adequate single hop into VK2/VK4/VK5 and VK7. I had good reports from the longer distances and only a single very weak contact in VK3 with Rhett VK3WE (received 41). On 20m I made my first ZL contact from a summit with strong signals from John ZL1BYZ. I also just managed a contact with Mike VK6MB.

After that I tried 15m briefly with no response and decided to pack up and head to Mt Hotham itself.

 

 

 

The cloud lifted a little by the middle of the day

The cloud lifted a little by the middle of the day

The antenna was strung between 3 convenient poles - you can see the main communications tower in the background.

The antenna was strung between 3 convenient poles – you can see the main communications tower in the background.

An hour and a half later I reached the top of Mt Hotham. This time I positioned myself on the flat top about midway between the fire tower and the Telstra comms tower where there were some convenient ski area boundary poles to attach the antenna to. The spacing was such that I could almost create a low horizontal antenna by tying off the ends of the antenna to adjacent poles.

The shack on Mt Hotham

The shack on Mt Hotham

Again I operated inside the Bothy bag for warmth and this time found that propagation had improved somewhat. I achieved 14 contacts on 40m including 4 VK3s and just John ZL1BYZ on 20m. I spent some time also trying to work Matt VK1MA on a summit in VK1, but whilst I could hear him at times, he couldn’t hear me at all.

 

This is the 4th time I’ve activated these two summits and each time has provided different conditions and different challenges. They are of course both very convenient summits to reach if you happen to be staying at Mt Hotham in the summer or winter.

Here are the stats for the trip:

Stats

And here is the complete profile starting and finishing at Loch car park:

Profile

7 thoughts on “Mt Loch and Mt Hotham – 9 July 2016

  1. Hi David, what a great adventure. I can only just imagine what it was like! I enjoyed your photos and the GPS trace gives an indication of how hard the heart was beating!
    cheers
    John D
    VK5BJE/VK5PF

  2. Excellent report David, well done on getting to Loch. The first three photos demonstrate how dangetous white-out conditions can be. Good to see you had some sun and blue sky.
    73, Andrew VK1AD

    • Thanks Andrew. Yes, you always need to be respectful of the weather in the mountains. Mind, you this was far from white-out. I have experienced true white-out at Mt Hotham where you couldn’t see your skis! However I was in the resort at the time, not back-country.

  3. David
    You easily qualify for the highest efficiency SOTA activator in VK… one outing, two summits, 26 points! Congratulations on the two snow activations and thanks for the writeup and pictures.
    Regards Paul vk3hn

    • Thanks Paul. Even with high efficiency, I do need to get out a bit more if I’m going to make Mountain Goat in less than 10 years!

      • You and me both! Its good to have a goal in ones hobby. I regard MG as a very long term one. In the meantime the fun factor makes it worth the outings. SOTA for me is mountain walking, country driving, exercise, and radio, with the added dimension of blogging about it later to a small but smart and active community of like minded people. 73 Paul vk3hn.

Leave a Reply to VK3IL Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *