With the spring closing in we wanted to utilize the snow left i Trondheim before it all melted away for the season. This time out we chose one of the more demanding SOTA-summits in the immediate area of Trondheim. This was maybe one of the reasons that we only had two participants on this trip. But we brought our well trusted portable equipment and took off to the summit.
As last year we started the ski trip at “Ferista”, maybe the point furthest away from the summit where you can start skiing. The participants; LB5DH and LB8LI had brought mountain skis and ordinary cross country skis respectively. As both of the participants went on this trip the year before, we knew the toughness level of the trip was on the upper side of the scale. And we knew that the final climb would be difficult, especially on cross country skis. Thus LB8LI had to go the last ~50 meters by foot.
Arriving on top of the summit, LB5DH set up shelter from the wind and LB8LI started setting up our trusted 20 m vertical antenna. Even with windy conditions we managed to rise the mast with only a pile of snow supporting it.
After raising the mast and laying out the ground plane we tuned the antenna to ~1 SWR and started transmitting. With the conditions being wonderful at the top we got our QSOs relatively quickly even with forgetting to switch the RF-power up to 100 W. LB8LI even got to send out some 52-reports to the chasers. Maybe with switching up the power we would have gotten some neat DX, but maybe next time…
With both of the participants have filled up their page in the logbook we decided to head home before the sun set and our toes froze off. Knowing this would be mostly downhill, was probably the best feeling of the day. Reaching the end point at around 18:30 CET the trip had a total time of seven hours.
Thanks to LB5DH, LB8LI and all the chasers working us this day!
