Soon after Easter, for family reasons, we needed to head to Waimate. Naturally, I scoped out the area and found a potential summit. This one hadn’t been activated yet. I scoured the web looking for clues as to what the access was, and I stumbled across a page describing the access being open, but 4 wheel drive was required. How is it that this drive up is sitting there unactivated I wondered?
The morning we set off, it was very foggy. Once we got onto the track the fogged rolled away, or more correctly we rolled out from underneath it. A beautiful clear calm day was awaiting above he cloud layer. Once we made it to the top we set up using the trig for a mast and stringing out the dipole. I started on 80 due to the hour of the day and made a single contact. Then QSYed to 40 and made 4 more contacts in quick succession. Onto 20 with 2 more contacts and back to 80 for another 4 contacts. Finally another blast on 40 for one more contact to make a total of 13 contacts for the summit.
We then packed up and went back down. A tiki-tour up the Waitaki valley through the McKenzie basin and across to Akaroa where we spent the night. A truly wonderful trip were we got to set eyes on ZL3/CB-001 Mt Cook / Aoraki – a first for us.
Details
Summit – ZL3/CB-596 Mount Studholme
Height – 1086 mASL (drive up)
Access – Via doc 4wd track off Upper Hook Road
Coverage – Spark good coverage.
Summit Marker – Broadcast tower + trig
Land Access Permission – Not required.
NB: Photos are not for use elsewhere, without prior approval
ZL-SOTA. Warren (ZL2AJ) and Emma 