Turned out to be a very difficult journey. No trail- extremely dense/dry/varied brush and growth. Sage, mesquite, yucca, CA sagebrush, etc. Steep in sections and almost impassable growth complicated things. I ended up crawling on all fours to get through many sections, scaling rock to work around, pushing straight through in sections. Lots of dust and debris stirred up my throat became numb from all the particulates and water rationing. 50 oz of water turned out to be inadequate. Deceptively epic! Proud I did it but I am hurting all over from muscle soreness and scratches/abrasions/cuts/bruises. Beautiful at night w moon shining on ocean to the W and meteors above.
My inverted V for 40m was performing terribly with SWR light blinking on the 857. Maybe it was the dome shaped rock I was set up on and lack of element height from rock. I flipped the +/- legs after awhile to see if it would help as one side had more level rock beneath and more height. In any event I was able to push 100W at times but made contact w AZ on 25w and also VA and TX on the HHH net on 100w but VA had difficulty copying me. Had PSK contacts going at 5-30w to NY and other places but the operators seemed impatient and stopped the instant I was weak copy. This was annoying bc they could clearly copy me enough to reply to my CQ and got my call correct right away etc. I always told people I was SOTA portable on a mtn top to try and keep their interest but alas some people are just looking for quick contacts. Oh well. My jt65 was not decoding for some reason and after quite a few hours the LiFePo battery dropped to 9V quickly and I was done. It would take roughly 3 hours to get down. I had to reference my phone tracking app history often as it was impossible for the most part to locate where I had come up! The lone pair of silver eyes watching me from the brush below was exciting. Fox/bobcat/ringtail?
I lost my beloved Diamond NR770 up there as well as a section of my fishing pole mast. The brush and foilage was so intense I actually somehow lost the Diamond even though the base was in my front pocket of my jeans and went up my side through backpack strap. I was bummed but there was no back tracking was just too difficult. I lost the mast section and was just too beat to really care hehe. Interesting to reflect on the trip in hindsight afterwards.