SOTA Activation of Guatisea (EA8/LA-008)

I made the short drive to the base of this summit from EA/LA-005 Montana Blanca and started the ascent. Now this was interesting because there’s no marked trails on my walking map or my Garmin GPS Unit! I took the approach of just heading straight up it where possible; the slopes are very steep so this was appropriately tiring. After 30 minutes I was at the top, the summit is a nice flat plateau with some excellent views of the island.

Band:	17m SSB
QSOs:	22
Parking:	Near village at the foot of summit
Points:	1
Height:	544m
Highlight:	Small flowers growing at the summit on the otherwise barren volcanic stone landscape, also a beautiful sunset view
Lowlight:	The descent from the summit was tough work as it was very steep and slippery due to loose gravel/sand. Lost my footing a few times, but by adopting a zig-zag approach along the ridge I limited this.

I chose to activate on 17m this time to see if I could get back to the UK chasers. This seemed to work better with pretty solid contacts both ways. I netted 21 QSOs in just over 20 minutes of operating and with the sun starting to set I decided to go and find my hotel for the night. Furthest DX was NE4TN but all contacts were appreciated 🙂

Time	Call	Band
16:38z	G3VXJ	18MHz
16:39z	CT1HIX	18MHz
16:41z	G0POT	18MHz
16:43z	CU3AA	18MHz
16:44z	G6TUH	18MHz
16:45z	DJ5AV	18MHz
16:46z	IK1GPG	18MHz
16:47z	DL8MLD	18MHz
16:50z	DL3JPN	18MHz
16:51z	OH9XX	18MHz
16:52z	DL3HXX	18MHz
16:53z	EA2CKX	18MHz
16:54z	EA2DT	18MHz
16:54z	EA1XI	18MHz
16:55z	EA4MZ	18MHz
16:55z	EA1IPN	18MHz
16:56z	EA1SB	18MHz
16:56z	DL3HXX	18MHz
16:57z	EA1HMT	18MHz
16:58z	CU3BL	18MHz
17:00z	NE4TN	18MHz
17:01z	GI4ONL	18MHz