Mount Remarkable VK5/NE-010 was my choice for summit number 300.

It’s a good hike of 6.2 km with about 580 metres of gain from the car park for a worthy hike and my personal achievement in the SOTA program.

   

Coffee break and feed and a quick sked on 3.680 with the locals before I leave the SOTA Transporter it was a nice cool morning probably 8c, My goal to make the top in 2 hrs.

   

The walking track has had a lot of clean out type work with fire rakes by the look getting rid of a lot of the loose rocks that normally kill your feet on this hike. I took my jumper off at Cathedral Rock noticing the valley below was fogged in but a really nice sunny day to look forward too on the mountain

Checking the E trex 30 I was on time walking the first 2 km in 28 minutes but that was about to change as the angles ramped up a bit more. Stopping at 4km was my next major pause at 1 hour to have a drink and snack I got some nice pictures near the plane crash site on the screed slopes.

   

Melrose and all the area around was still blanketed with fog, nice to see some green crops below for a change.

   

Screed slopes are always interesting and provide a good open view off the mountain, I made it here to this point in 1 hour.

     

Then more screed slopes with 1.5 km to go and now under pressure to make my Alert time.

The new monument at the top mentioning how Edward John Eyre named the Mountain Mount Remarkable as he had seen it from many places on his exploration trips around the State in 1840.

The Parks people have cleaned out the very large pile of rocks that was there before and made it a lot easier to set up my antenna.

   

Shots of the larger area now set up with tables ideal for resting my Squid Pole on to put up the antenna.

   

Once I was set up and on air a group of about 30 school boys reached the summit on a school hike, in no time I had them all sitting on these benches giving them an impromptu lecture on Amateur Radio the original social media. Then had them all wondering what all the beep beep was about as I was working some chasers on CW, ideal I thought to my self show them what a dinosaur I am.

School Boys rounded up by their teachers who thanked me for the free lesson and an interesting diversion, off they went on the rest of their hike. Several other hikers came along also that day it’s probably the most people I have ever exposed to the hobby on any summit.

Well once I got set up and on air there was a steady flow of chasers on 80m ssb and cw then the same on 40m ssb and cw topping of with a few qso on 20m cw as well. VK1MCW,VK1DA and ZL1BYZ made the effort of working me from a summit, 3 S2S in the log, thanks to you folks for that. After a few double ups of contacts on other bands and modes my score was soon up to 30 qso so I decided to try to qualify the VKFF award as well. As the SOTAwatch3 site is linked to Parks and Peaks I set about gaining a score of 44 qso. It took a while to get the last 3 or 4 but they came through giving me 1 activation towards the Boomerang Award in VKFF.

   

Great day on the mountain and a good walk back to the car park, I got a couple photos now the fog had lifted. 300 summits is a mile stone for me its taken 7 years to get to this stage of my SOTA experience and I still want to go on and do a lot more summits in the future.

Thanks to all the chasers and summit to summit activators who gave me a contact on this day on Mount Remarkable.

Thanks for reading my Blog.

Regards

Ian vk5cz ..