Our first visit to Mt Buller this year was for the school’s trials for inter-school snow sports on the weekend of 21/22 July. The kids were in training sessions most of the time and so I decided to take the opportunity to activate both Mt Stirling and Mt Buller on the Sat and Sun respectively.

 

 

In winter, access to Mt Stirling is only by skis/snow shoes as the closest you can get your car is Telephone Box Junction. From there, it’s about 5 km to the summit via Circuit Road, Baldy loop, Bluff Spur Trail, Howqua Gap trail and finally Clear Hills track. It took me about 2 hours to ski there in overcast weather, but generally good visibility.

 

 

 

The summit is quite exposed and there was a cold wind blowing once above the tree line. I set up the antenna attached to the information post near the summit trig and used the trig itself to tie off the antenna end. There was passing cloud making the visibility poor at times. Due to the cold wind, I pulled out my Bothy bag and operated inside it which helped a lot.

 

 

 

 

Getting on the air, I had no trouble spotting given the proximity to Mt Buller. I soon had 11 contacts logged across 80m and 40m with the usual mix of locals, inter-state and NZ. After 20 mins I was getting decidedly cool and so packed up and headed down out of the wind.

 

 

I stopped at Bluff Spur hut and ate lunch inside. This area is a popular spot for snow camping and there were a couple of groups there. The wood stove in the hut was lit and providing plenty of warmth.

 

 

 

 

 

 

After lunch, I skied back down to Telephone Box Junction in about 20 mins. Whilst it’s all down hill, the track is narrow in places which makes skiing quite tricky and hard work on the legs.

Mt Buller

 

The following day, the weather was reasonably clear and again with a light to moderate wind, so I headed up the summit. This is easy given the chair lift access and short hike to the summit cairn and fire watch hut. This time, I set up using a sign pole as an antenna support and put the operating position in the lee of the fire watch hut to keep out of the wind.

 

 

 

 

The climb up to the summit is popular with skiers, so I had quite a few visitors asking what I was doing, including a ski patroller who came past a couple of times on his way to the Chutes (a very challenging, out-of-bounds ski area at Buller).

 

 

 

 

 

Getting on air, I soon had quite a few contacts in the log including two S2S with Allen VK3ARH and Peter VK3PF. The propagation was unusual with expected behaviour on 80m and 40m, but 20m was bringing in both NZ and also 3 VK3 stations.

After logging 13 contacts, I signed off and packed up. As in previous activations, the return trip from Mt Buller is very fast and I was back at the lodge in about 10 minutes.

Nothing very new on this weekend, but another 26 points in the bag.