15km for 20 points!
Not a bad tradeoff!
All to breach the 100 point barrier–and well before Christmas! As the “mini-ascent” to JB-007 삿갓봉 only added 2.4 km to the total of my walk and I had just the right amount of daylight left to get it done, it was quite the deal.
It was important to get out before dark as it this was in Deogyusan National Park, and they don’t like folks doing night hikes (liability, etc) so even though the trail was not very rough at all and I had adequate lighting I’d have to deal with closed gates and such to get out, or sleep at the shelter (which I happened to pass thrice total due to my routing up via the Sakatgol valley/pass trail). If one chose to sleep at one of the many shelters provided, it would be quite easy to knock off 40 points in one weekend outing along the Deogyusan ridge, possibly even more–the facilities are cheap, manned, with limited food as well as other services available.
I made the requisite 4 contacts, took the obligatory summit shot, and quickly scuttled back down–it was 4 PM already and I had roughty 1.5 hours of descent from there… 3 out of those 4 QSOs were actually S2S to other hikers, up to Songnisan, Gayasan, and another mountain in Geochang, nearby. Unfortunately, 6K5ASG/p Gyeong-il at Gayasan was already an hour into his descent when we made contact, he was at 서성재 pass, well out of the AZ, but maybe 6K5CGB/p Ahn-seup in Geochang might provide me with some chaser points on this second summit (S2S pointage w/CB-014 was already claimed a couple of hours ago from Muryuongsan, and 6K2GZJ/p Tae-in was also just starting his descent.). We’ll see once I get more details.
All in all, successful, although I had to leave immediately after activation…
When I returned to the village at the bottom of the mountain, the field of cabbage I had passed by on the way up now only evidenced massacre.
김장 complete.
73.
Merci Fabi le fif pour le cigare!
20101113 JB-005
Closing in on the gap…it’s been a few weeks since my last SOTA expedition, and two weeks since my last hike(s) (non-SOTA) so I was itching to get out.
Now, as it’s “fire season” (nice and dry with lots of tinder laying about the countryside) many smaller “private” mountains are off-limits for the next few weeks, so one of my better options was to hit a national park, which remains open (and usually has some kind of surveillance system for fires and other such emergencies, also) a bit longer (I believe Deogyusan Nat’l Park‘ll be closed or at least restricted in some areas from November 15th to December 15th).
So, looking at the maps, trails, and elevation changes, I figured I could possibly make this outing really count (especially since it’s a little over an hour, one way, plus five bucks in tolls, to get to the trail head), and hit two different summits, time (sunshine) permitting, hitting the closest (Sakatbong) then Muryongsan, if possible. In the end, upon seeing what my real trail times were, I decided to hit Muryongsan first as it was the one that was “farther out” and slightly higher.
Getting started was a bit rough here, as I didn’t want to lug the big yagi all the way up the hill….a bit of a mistake. It appeared as if nobody could hear my signal. I did some tests between the two HTs and the different duckies and turns out the stock was better than my Diamond….must be something wrong there…and that the VR-6 was more sensitive than the VX-170 by one or two S points. After a few big groups stopped on the summit, ate lunch and whatnot, I finally started to get some contacts, must’ve been the timing or something… Had some so-so signal reports, however when I started making summit-to-summit contacts, the reports skyrocketed–so, my conclusion is the people on the ground with their systems in the Nebel maybe needed some adjustment.
As I was packing up, I left a little Geeocashee treat for future travellers passing through…
To top off the list of QSOs from this summit, before heading down and over to JB-007 Sakatbong, I heard 6K2GZJ/p starting to call CQ from CB-014 Songnisan. Though having heard of SOTA, he was still new to the business, so I gave him some pointers, though I was pleased to hear his strong (5W, 59++) signal over the 85 or so kilometers that separated us. In the meantime, I walked away with 10 chaser points 😉
There’s also a spring located right below the Sakatgol Shelter, at 35.79059°N & 127.70509°E to fill up at.
And…for you GIS-heads out there, trig point trivia!
삼각점 literally means “triangle point” in Korean
위도 = latitude (remember that 위 means “up”)
Likewise for weather, time and location, 도 = degrees, 분 = minutes and 초 = seconds.
높이 is a reference to height, whereas 해발 is height above sea level (as is indicated by 해, sea).
HL4ZFA (ex. HL4/W2VLA) 山정상 교신 SOTA 