While in Christchurch doing a block course for my engineering diploma, I decided to catch a summit. Mount Alford had not been activated yet so I decided it was a good one to put in the log. During the drive out I drove through several shower bands and was struggling to convince myself this was still a good idea. I rechecked the metservice …
Author: zlsotawarren.emma
On the southern end of the Kaweka Ranges is a summit called Don Juan. We decided this would be a good summit to activate during our weekend in Hawkes Bay. The drive out to this one takes a little while but the walk is fairly moderate with a 250 m ascent. A good bit of huff and puff for a Saturday afternoon with some radio …
For our next challenge we decided we would give Karioi a go. Karioi is an extinct volcano just south of Raglan. It has been on our to do list for a while so on Sunday we set out. The weather was a bit cooler than we usually climb in but it made for a comfortable walk up. The track through the farmland starts out gentle …
So it has been a while since we got to be out and on the SOTA trail. Winter weather, rain, cold, rain, cold, Warren on call, rain, cold…..study, work, the annual teaching season, life in general, so when a weekend that was set for reasonable forecast popped up, we grabbed it and off we set. Manukau Heads is on the South side of the entrance …
A break in the winters weather gave us a chance to get out and discover a new hill to climb. With so much rain lately we havent been out much, however today was a beautiful day, with no wind and clear skies to ascend Taupiri. You will not find tracks up Taupiri on the Linz maps, or DoC website, but there is a public track …
A quick activation here as I was running out of light. The road to this summit is extremely long and windy. If you take passengers they may get motion sickness. I think I may have even given myself a headache with driving the road between Pirauau and this summit. On the grey line is great for DX but in mid winter it is also very …
The first summit to be activated in Gisborne was also my fourth “153” Summit. I have previously activated ZL1/WK-153 near Cambridge, a very popular summit. ZL1/WL-153 Mount Crawford a drive up in Mirimar Wellington, and ZL1/HB-153 Cape Kidnappers in Hawkes Bay recently. ZL1/GI-153 is near Te Karaka and hosts a cell site, rural internet and the local amateur 950 repeater. My companion was ZL2CC who …
Summit number two for today. I have only been to Pirauau once before, deploying a portable for a car rally many years ago. Knowing who to contact to get access to some of the hills I have visited in the past, and how to get to them turned out to be very useful here. Pirauau is a hill inland from Tolaga Bay which used to …
This summit is situated east of Hastings and is part of what used to be Clifton Station. Parts have been sold to American tycoon Julian Robertson who has developed the land into a resort style international golf course. http://www.capekidnappers.com/luxury-golf-course/course. We were lucky enough to be granted access to the trig site to do SOTA. Sadly sometime between our last activation and setting of for this …
On an unsuspecting Sunday we arranged to go up Hikurangi to catch some sights and play a little radio. This hill also houses the local amateur repeater 715. We made arrangements with the friendly land owners and set out….early because we had word there were prospects of a few summit to summit points up for grabs and who wants to miss those right!?! The morning …