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SOTA: Blue Job Mountain, March 2024

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A rising, snow-covered trail through trees, with the sun ahead.

Drizzle ended when the drive did and mine was the first car in the lot. I gathered my things and started up the tower trail. Oops. I turned back to grab the crappie pole. Back on track, snow and puddles and slush filled the way. Slick spots were few, but I tromped across lots of shattered ice bits deposited by tree limbs periodically letting loose cascades of tinkling cylinders.

During the half-hour climb I also heard metal bars ringing as if struck by other metal bars. When I arrived atop the foggy summit, I discovered decimated ice sheets shed by the communications and fire towers, with some shards nearly an inch thick. I rejected passing through the active debris field to my usual sitting spot and set up well away from danger in the lee of a small shed.

Hand-painted sign in the snow at the base of a tower staircase reads "Even up here you're the best sight I see. Prom?"

I quickly strung up a 17m dipole and switched on my Rock-Mite to launch the operation. Unfortunately, the radio failed to deliver any audio to my headphones. Puzzled and annoyed but undeterred, I replaced one dipole for another, set up the K1, then discovered the earcup end of my headphone cable pulled partway out of its socket. A quick fix. I started calling CQ SOTA on 14063 right at my predicted start time.


Ice-covered tree limbs.


Over 10 minutes I logged K2JB in North Carolina, SA4BLM in Sweden, MI0SRR in Northern Ireland, and WD0ETG in Virginia, qualifying the activation despite what seemed to be an underperforming 20-meter band. It was time to string up my end-fed half-wave to try my luck elsewhere. 

I pulled off the headphones and once again heard the clattering of ice chunks striking tower hardware. The Sun had almost burned through the clouds and the growing warmth was accelerating the thaw. Metallic reports and ringing chords made an appealing sonic backdrop. Then, as I tied off one end of my antenna, I heard a sudden rush of air. a sub-second whir that ended in a thud. One heavy slab had fallen with no crossbar interruption, no guy line stall, and made impact 50 feet away. I felt the sobering percussion both beneath my feet and through the air. I was thankful to have kept my distance.

The new wire worked well on 15, rewarding me with six more European countries and several west coast US contacts. Forty was quiet and 20 never rose to expectation, but I did connect with KF9D on an Ohio peak for my only summit-to-summit contact of the day.

I logged 33 during a little over an hour operating time, a reasonable tally. I hiked down the mountain cautiously and got home in time for lunch. It was my first visit to Blue Job where I met nobody on the trail or at the peak.

A man in winter sits outdoors leaning on a clapboard-sided shack.


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