SOTA tur i Hemsedal (14.08.2020)

Hi, I would like to share with you report about out two days SOTA (Summit on the air) activation trip in Hemsedal. For a quite long time I was looking at three closely located mountains in the Hemsedal area Nibbi (LA/BU-035), Bjørnbakknøse (LA/BU-037) and Skurvefjellet (LA/BU-034). All tree mountains are about 1700m (5577 ft) high and form triangle at the center of which height is about 1550m (5085ft). So if one reaches the center of this formation to each summit it's necessary to climb just 150m (492ft) of altitude which is not so hard. All these give us a good premise for triple SOTA activation. Earlier this summer I activated another summit in the same area and knew that a terrain is demanding. From about 1400m area is covered by scree, it's hard to find water and flat area to set up the tent. In addition this area doesn't have marked trails and most of the tour descriptions I found was from the winter season/ski based. But last week I got a nice tip from an unexpected source - my dentist! :), he owns a cabin in this area and recently visited LA/BU-035. He showed me the ravine which they used to reach the destination, but mentioned that that way is not used very much. Weather forecast for Friday and Saturday was nice and OM LB1RH also had some spare time to join me on this trip. After a long discussion in front of the map we decided to take a chance and follow the route suggested by my dentist. Overall this seems to be a good decision, but there was a quite steep path between altitudes 1430m and 1490m and we decided that descending the same path with heavy bags without the rope would be too dangerous and we should take another route back. We dropped the heaviest part of our kits at about 1600m and went to activate Nibbi (LA/BU-035). Activation of Nibbi went smooth, I even took some time to have a nice chat with local ham through the repeater. On the way to Nibbi we met a deer, we got the impression that the animal was weak, probably it somehow found the way up, but could not escape this rocky desert and was suffering from hunger and harsh environment. We picked up our kit on the way down and started to move slowly to the planned camp area which was hidden by relief details. On some maps one can find small lake at that area, but others show nothing. We were really hoping to see that lake, because our water reserve was very limited. Hopefully the lake was in the proper place and by miracle we could also find a tiny piece of flat land near the bank to set-up two tents. The only disappointing thing was missing mobile coverage :). LB1RH felt not good and was not sure if he can make two more summits tomorrow and we agreed that I would activate the closest one alone early in the morning and the remaining one together. I started climbing LA/BU-037 6.00 local time and it took me just 25 minutes to the summit.

© Mikhail Khelik

The issue was absence of takers, fellow european chasers were sleeping so I got not much help from sotawatch spots, random hams I could hear simply didn't answer on my QRP signal call. I got the first answer from SP9AMH on 30m band about 8.00 local time and shortly got one more contact, I became optimistic :), suddenly the cable of my morse paddle failed so I could only send dots :((. Without much hope I jumped to 40m band SSB, but to my gladness I got an answer and completed activation very fast and could make it back to camp to agreed time. After the breakfast we started moving to Skurvefjellet LA/BU-034, we got the pileup on 20m here. Chasers didn't want to cooperate :(, we wanted to work in the group, but only minority of the chasers were willing to work with the second operator. Finally I gave up and left LB1RH on 20m band and went to 40m and 15m where I managed to get some QSOs. We finished this SOTA activation and went back to the basecamp.

© Mikhail Khelik

LB1RH got refreshed and motivated after handling the pileup on 20m, I told him that it took only 25 minutes up to LA/BU-037 from the camp and I am not against waiting for him. So he decided to activate it as well. I also set up my radio station in a camp area to follow his activation. LA/BU-037 was challenging for Lauris as well as he couldn't spot himself due to some issues with the app. At the same time I couldn't help him because of the missing mobile net in my area :), at least I gave him one QSO :). Lauris went back and after a short break we started moving home. We took another way back, with more gradual descent. We followed the water stream down, generally it was fine until we reached at one place the waterfall surrounded by the vertical walls :), but we passed this obstacle by gaining some altitude where it was not so steep anymore. Way back took us much longer, it took us more than 4 hour to reach the parking and we were completely exhausted by that time. GPS showed that we crossed about 32 km during these two days. It was an excellent hiking tour and very well deserved 18 SOTA points!

Thanks, LB8CG!