If you enjoy the outdoors and enjoy this crazy radio hobby, Summits On The Air (SOTA) is for you. It’s like POTA on steriods and it brings out the further enjoyment of getting great exercise and tests your skills with lower power operations. After all, who want to lug up heavy equipment and batteries up a summit? Also, when you are up with elevation, your antenna does the talking just fine- so you really don’t need power. In hopes of inspiring more club members to try a SOTA or more POTA road trips, here’s a post of my October 2024 trip to the Big Bend area. For you youngsters, please don’t laugh too much at this old man’s huffing and puffing, but I it was an awesome adventure that I hope you’ll consider doing yourselves. I’m definitely going back. Any takers?.
Texas is flat like a pancake. If you want to do a SOTA (Summits On The Air), you’ll quickly find out that there are no qualifying summits in the Houston area. There are a few sites in the San Antonio region, but the plentiful summits live in West Texas. So… it’s time for a road trip!
Along the way, I usually check if there are any rare POTA parks which I could activate for those hungry and competitive hunters. For this trip, I spotted a few:
- Kickapoo Caverns Park (US-3021)- 17 activations
- Elephant Mountain Wildlife Management Area (US-6554)- 15 activations
- Fort Davis National Park (US–0816)- 33 activations
It makes sense these are kind of rare since they are in out-of-the-way places, which is consistent with the West Texas population and terrain.
Half the fun is planning a feasible trip. This includes doing research of parks and summits ahead of time. For the SOTA sites, I make sure the target summits are on public property and that others have activated or hiked the summit before. https://sotawatch.sota.org.uk/en/ is the SOTA bible. It provides posted hints and trail information that others have kindly recorded- this tremendously prepares anyone in advance. i.e. “watch out for the scorpions and pesky gnats”, or “take a southern path for an easier ascent”, “stay out because of private property”, etc.
I planned a 4-day trip across Texas and back, leaving Friday and returning Monday, while hitting 3 POTA sites and 4 SOTA summits.
Here’s the final itinerary that I took
Friday.
Friday was a 6-hour drive to Kickapoo Caverns POTA site- this was one of two POTA sites conveniently on the way to Terlingua, my overnight destination for the next day’s 1st SOTA ascent. This POTA park was quite out-of-the-way. After a while you get used to driving down lonely, isolated roads but in a quiet voice you hear yourself repeatedly saying, “what if my car breaks down in the middle of nowhere?”.
Arriving at the park, I noticed there were no other cars in sight. The volunteer Park Ranger was friendly and reminded me to check into the HQ station – yes, I tried to cheat and setup without registering. I gladly agreed to do so, knowing my Texas Parks USA card would release me of needing to pay any day entrance fees. The 2 rangers inside the HQ building were friendly but they seemed startled to see a visitor come into their room.
With great weather, I easily setup my usual surveyors tripod, a carbon fiber telescoping mast, my 20m linked dipole, and my Yaesu FT-991A 100W radio. I quickly made 33 QSOs on 20m (9 CW/24 SSB) and hopefully fulfilled some hunters’ log for a rare missing Texas POTA site
With a long 4hr ride still ahead, I quickly packed up and got back on the road to hit my next destination- The Elephant WMA just 35 miles north of the famous Big Bend Park.
Arriving slightly behind schedule, this looked like an abandoned ghost town when first entering. There was a large metal sign framed over the entry road, but in the middle of nowhere with nothing but dirt surrounding the spot. I ended up meandering up and down a few twisty underdeveloped dirt roads until parking at a primitive campsite- not a sole was present. Spooky like a cemetery IMHO.
The effort to activate here was rewarded with excellent propagation, no noise, and strong incoming signals, in part due to no obstructions in the nearby area- a large flat prairie with distant mountains in the background. 147 QSOs here.
I unexpectedly created a modest 20m SSB pileup which was terribly fun. It was quite odd to work stations since I’m used to 20m skip that usually radiates over Texas. Weird since I worked El Paso, Dallas, and locations in between.
I was wary of operating too long, even though a pileup was not subsidizing. I wanted to avoid departure after sunset in a desolate and unfamiliar place especially along the twisty and meandering poorly marked dirt roads leading out of the park. So, while still enjoying nature’s incredible solitude and beauty of the setting sun, I hurriedly disassembled my equipment and urgently scampered back in the car.
With Internet non-existent, I felt kind of lost with my friend Google Maps. I luckily the car’s GPS was still working, so I logically headed to a south bearing- which would get me at least in the general vicinity- of Telingua.
Upon arrival in Telingua (yes, cellular internet reappeared after a while) my overnight stay was at a redneck country sounding place called Paisano’s RV trailer park. In addition to the RV park, the owner built a small cluster of nondescript standalone cabins, which is where I stayed. The park was adorned with a 30’ metallic dinosaur in the front.
It was after sunset arrival time and the keylock code sent to me earlier was supposed to electronically unlock my cabin. Well, it didn’t work, but luckily Erica answered the RV park’s phone line and gave me an alternate code. Apparently, the power went out earlier and erased the pre-programmed special lock code for me- but luckily leaving the master code still intact (which I was given).
The place was nice, like an ugly duckling on the outside and a beautiful swan on the inside. This place even had a walk-in amazon rain shower in the bathroom.
Too bad I was only there for an over night stay. I could have saved a bunch of $$ if I stayed at one of many yurts, teepees, or natural cabins in this bare nature town- but each of these venues use community showers and bathrooms which wasn’t a compromise I wanted to partake with this time around. I did the teepee (Buzzard’s Roost) thing last year
which was neat, but I’m a through and through a city boy, so I opted for the inhouse bathroom this time.
Saturday
Got up at sunrise and headed to the Painted Hills Summit (W5T/SB-003) at elevation 4262′.
A previous SOTA activator(N9XG) generously posted a GPX trail map of his ascent. I learned to import it into a saved map and using ALLTRAILS, I could literally retrace the exact steps from the trailhead to the summit.
This worked great—except it was extremely easy to veer off his mapped tracks. For example, I instinctively hiked up along along a gully naturally formed from past water drainage, but that quickly got me off the programmed track.
The effort to realign onto the mapped track caused me to exert more effort than normal since to re-track from my off-track paths, I constantly had to revise my track direction along corrective steep gradient paths. If someone was watching me, I’m sure I looked silly making my summit climb while continuously checking my iPhone to assure the accuracy of my track progression. This is all symptomatic of a newbie hiker who didn’t want to assume any risk of the getting to the summit.
Of note, I took a walking stick that was given to me by my daughter, Casie, in a previous SOTA hike in New Mexico. I took it just for “kicks”, not realizing afterwards that having it was a godsend. Not being an active hiker, I had no idea how awesome hiking sticks are. They literally add powered leverage during ascent, and enhanced stability especially in the descent of a steep grade. I’m sold on them.
Oh, another revelation for this newbie hiker. Long pants are mandatory. I almost opted to hike with shorts, but luckily decided to wear long pants. I supremely avoided major abrasions and cactus penetrations with the long pants!
A hike to the base of the summit and ascent to the top took 2 hours.
I deployed my Elecraft KX-2 operating with its internal battery pack and transmitting with 5W to my Sotabeam Bandhopper II linked dipole held up at its apex with my Sotabeam Carbon-6 ultralight telescoping mast extended to 18’. The CW paddle is a tiny magnetic paddle UMPP-1 made by GM0EUL in Scotland. Logging is done by pen and paper.
I brought along my ultra lightweight chair and table made by Helinox. I hate sitting on the ground while trying to operate. This Helinox combination makes hilltop operating luxurious at only the added weight of less than 3lbs of mass.
Someone built a circle of rocks at the summit. This was handy, as I used the rock base to hold up my telescoping mast.
15 contacts successfully logged in 21 minutes ranged from Calif to Florida to Maiitoba (Canada), well exceeded the required 4 QSOs needed to certify my SOTA activation.
Sadly, I left my expensive and long-time used Tilley hat on the peak of the summit. I have high hopes that the next summit climber will find it and return it back to me since it has my name and address attached to a sewn-in tag within the brim. I think these hats are designed to be lost and returned (!!), otherwise why would they have a sewn-in tag for ID?
At this point it I was already 1.5hours behind schedule and more worn out than I had hoped. Wisdom told me to cancel my next planned 2nd summit. Instead, I headed to the Fort Davis National Park for an easy POTA setup and activation.
Because of the CQ WW SSB contest ongoing during my weekend activations, I avoided SSB and worked CW. Oddly, propagation was only mediocre compared to the previous evening. That’s how it goes.
Because of the CQ WW SSB contest ongoing during my weekend activations, I avoided SSB and worked CW. Oddly, propagation was only mediocre compared to the previous evening. That’s how it goes.
After a modest supper of a dried-out pre-made pizza that I picked up from the local Fort Davis Market.
Unexpectedly, next to my motel, I noticed an old restaurant was being stripped out and the trash bin caught my eye. A DIRECT TV dish in the dumpster! I grabbed it as John AB5SS, and I have been talking about getting on the UHF/microwave bands. Another repurposing project in the works! Yep, it’s packed in the back of my mini-van.
I had a sound sleep that night and woke up ready for the next objectives on Sunday.
Sunday
This was a mild, low stress adventure day. My targets were 1) The Mount Locke summit (W5T/DE-003) aka The McDonald Observatory and 2) 6411 aka DMR (W5T/DW-018) at the Davis Mountain Resort area, both of which I had activated last year. Knowing the profile and access of each made this predictable, controllable, and low stress. The early morning arrival at the McDonald Observatory, elevation 6791′, allowed me to absorb the beauty of a sunrise in the Big Bend area. If you enjoy communing with nature, this was it even from within a car. Words and photos can’t describe its beauty. At one point, I turned off my car headlights and marveled at the rising sunlight sprinkling through the mountain top edges.
Arrival at the observatory was at 0800. I literally drove up to the summit peak, dropped off my equipment, and then receded about 100’ back to the visitors’ parking lot.
As a new experience, I deployed my Arrow 3 element 2m portable Yagi, to see if there were any 2m operators willing to QSO with a SOTA op. My setup consisted of a cheapo Walmart camera tripod and an old photographer’s monopole tie-wrapped together so the Arrow antenna could be mounted with semi-stability. 
I called CQ SOTA on 146.52 FM and quickly got a response from Jake KG6DRT, who so kindly announced my presence with an ongoing morning local 75m net. As a result, I received calls from 4 more local hams all from Alpine, Texas about 50 miles southeast of me. A few CQs later didn’t result in any further success but honestly, I didn’t try very long since I needed to QSY to HF and progress along my tight timeline schedule. I was quite excited to work my 1st VHF QSOs on SOTA using my setup of 50W FM on 2m. I secretly harbored a goal to radiate over the surrounding mountains and perhaps hit Tucson Ariz or San Anton in the other direction. But no joy on that dream. Effective 2m SOTA ops really requires a great line-of-sight location. My experience here was fun, but it carries the burden of much more bulk and weight in your pack- something that I’m not quite ready to undertake yet. (Oh, in comparison- I so love my tiny, compact KX2 radio!).
Sixteen 20m QSOs later, I packed it up and headed off to the DMR summit (elevation 6411′), only an hour away.
Again, having done this site before, I was aware of what to expect. There’s an especially dicey drive ascending steeply up a very primitive dirt road chock full of deep crevices and rocks. Last year, I had a tough time getting up that steep section of the road leading to the “trailhead”. I vividly recall the multiple times scraping the bottom of the oil pan with the ground due to the poor clearance of my Honda. In a perfect life, I’d have a 3rd car which would be a high clearance jeep or KA5TBB’s hummer.
OK, I made it up while holding my breath. The last few yards of ascent by car, had my front wheels wildly spinning to get any semblance of grip underneath a flow of sliding shale and dirt. It felt like this was no different than driving up an incline in snow. I punched the button labeled SNOW on my dashboard, thinking the automated computer would better balance my slippage, but it didn’t help at all. Oh, I wish I had 4-wheel drive! Ultimately, I made it up a bit further along the road than last year, which meant less hiking to the summit- yeah!
With gorgeous 80-degree weather, I easily trekked uphill to the familiar summit. The “No Trespassing “signs were of less worry to me this time, as my new bravery was based on memories of no shotguns wielded at me last time.
On the final leg of the relatively steep ascent, I spotted a hefty wild donkey as large as a full-sized horse. This guy was headed down from the summit along the same path I was ascending. I didn’t recall anyone ever being attacked nor bitten by a hostile donkey, but its size was intimidating, so I decided to walk off the path and wait, in hopes of him descending past me. Well, he spotted me and stopped. We both stalled in a detente, neither of us moving, so I took in a full breath of air, and ascended slowly up, in hopes of passing him in a non-threatening way. He saw my approach and much to my delight, he casually but well intentionally meandered off to the side of the trail and disappeared into the wooded brush. That was my closest encounter with nature on this trip, besides the 2 huge Javelina wild boars that earlier crossed in front of the car.
At the summit, I setup my usual KX-2 QRP CW radio equipment, made 23 QSOs on 20m CW under the shade of a tree. I used a common technique of leaning my telescoping mast into the tree which preclude having to secure a base. The only negative of using a tree is that the wires can very easily tangled up in the branches- which happened. The return to my car was fast, since our friend gravity magnifies the easy effort to go downhill.
On the way out, my minivan decided to voice a strong protest to my poor selection of extremely rocky roads. The idiot lights of my car popped up a “low tire pressure” warning, but there was no indication of a specific tire having low air. That was weird. As a precautionary measure, I pulled over and inspected all 4 tires. Yep, the rear right tire was hemorrhaging air. A large hole was hissing like crazy. I was still on this desolate rough road with a few rural homes/trailers sprinkled along the drive down to the main road. At worst case I could seek help from someone, if anyone was at home.
I drove a bit further along the road and found a reasonably clear spot to park and remove the wheel. Thank goodness I had my breaker bar to get the lug nuts off. Note to others: I always carry an 18″ 1/2″ drive breaker bar in my car. This give you the magnified leverage to remove the lug nuts off a car wheel. This is a life saver, especially if the lug nuts were last installed by someone (e.g. repair shop) with a pneumatic impact wrench- which makes them almost impossible to remove by hand. Also, keep a tire plug patch kit in your car!
The damage was a large gash, not a typical nicely rounded hole that we suburbanites find in a nail puncture. This was likely a result of a knife edge piece of rock slicing into the rubber. In hindsight this was a abusive amount of duress I put on the car tires even though I have sturdy radials, but it’s another lesson learned.
So, I got the tire jacked up with the mini-van’s emergency kit. Got the tire off.
Observed the ugly gash and retrieved my emergency patch kit and successfully punched a rubber patch strip into the hole. It seemed to go in way too easily, so I added another patch strip into the linear gash, hoping to increase the odds of a successful seal when pumped up. Well, it worked!
I must make comment on the friendly WTexas folks who passed an obvious visitor to their deserted dirt lands. Four different folks stopped to offer help. One lady passenger even offered me a bottle of extra water. Another construction trucker offered me a tankful of compressed air, while his bulldog smiled at me from the front seat. It’s heartwarming to see such hospitality and character in folks that you don’t even know along an isolated dusty road.
With anxious trepidation, I monitored the car dashboard for low tire pressure warnings as I left the area. All good. I then made the decision to head back to Telingua to attempt the Summit #2 that I aborted the day before.
Monday
The revised plan was to tackle Summit #2 aka Grape Vine Hills summit (W5T/SB-006), elevation 3858’, a relatively low summit and described by a SOTA activator, as “easy”. Getting another early sunrise start gave me another awesome experience with the beauty of this area.
It was a terribly rough and super bumpy road to get to the trailhead. This summit was along the same trail as the popular Balanced Rock summit, which mostly attracts hikers to this area.
4 miles along an extreme bumpy ride limited my speed to around 15 mph most of the way which bloated my careful paper plans to get in and out quickly.
To avoid another tire blow out, I parked well below the trailhead which unfortunately added about 2 miles of extra hiking.
Spoiler alert- I never made it to the summit, but this was a cathartically satisfying attempt since learned a lot despite my absence of formal hiking/climbing training nor skills. I had researched and planned this ascent by interpreting notes from others and scrutinizing elevation contour maps as well as aerial landscape shots by google. A previous activator warned of a not approaching by the east, so I *thought* I would trek up the summit from the north. Due to my inexperience, I started fine along a northern approach but made a wrong turn ½ the way up and my new track trended East toward the impassible cliffs.
When you are on the mountain side, you don’t have the perspective of location, so what initially looks like a viable path turns into an impasse.
This is to say, I did a great job scaling up some sheer cliff sides. I’m proud to say it was remarkable and even dangerous. I had 3 occasions of hitting impassible paths and had to backtrack descend and reclimb. I simply got exhausted, and my legs got heavy, and I started slipping excessively- a recipe for disaster.
During one stop to catch my breath, I unstrapped my backpack, and it accidently slid down a few feet but luckily was stopped by a cactus plant- whew. It easily could have fallen most of the way back down the mountain
Wisdom told me to abort this summit, so I willingly accepted this decision and then turned my attention to gladly descend as quickly as possible. In my excitement, I found myself recklessly sliding down sharp downhill gradients on my ass. The loose shale was extremely slippery and offered my posterior an easy ride down. Thank goodness I decided to wear hiking pants vs shorts. By the time I got down the cliffs, my left hand was stinging, only to find upon examination a few microfine cactus needles impaled into my skin. I’ve never seen such tiny spikes before, but I marveled how mother nature is equipped with all kinds of ways to protect and transport cellular tissue in the plant world. I ended up extracting the last miniature needles back at home while using my most powerful magnifiers on my workbench and a set of precision tweezers used for SMT work.
Again, even though this was an aborted ascent, I felt good that I gave it my best shot for a newbie and naive climber. I still retain silly pride in being able to scale up those very steep cliffs albeit dangerous. I’m oddly ready to do it again, with the knowledge of how “how not to do it”. Anyone want to come along?
Note: Dan KG5PVP in our club is a mountaineering outdoor and survival expert. Yep, having Dan help me along the climb would have been perfect- but major leaps in learning is accomplished by making mistakes, and I sure learned A LOT.
73’s de W5OC
That looked like an amazing trip, Dave! Thanks for sharing the experience.
Nice write up Dave. Brings back fond memories of being spending lots of time out there many many years ago!!
Amazing to vicariously live through you David. Wow – you are a brave man. Given all I learned I will stay with POTA for now.