Exposed Trail

3914, SE-178 is a non-prominent prominence located near nothing, well between Vale Oregon and Lake Owyhee Reservoir. For a real 4x4 it’s a drive up, but the ruts became to deep for our Rav4 (eight inches of clearance.) The road we took was not on a map and the road were looking for that was on the map wasn’t discoverable by us on the ground. As you can see from the track attached to sotl.as there is almost no elevation gain. The summit is a long ridge in a bumpy landscape. We had difficulty figuring out which lump it was. The summit is entirely open.

Howlock Mountain had caught my eye during the 2023 W7O Campout. It was an unactivated summit off trail north of Thielsen and south of Tipsoo. For 2025, Adam K6ARK and Mark KD7DTS proposed doing the ridge traverse from Tipsoo (W7O/CS-195). After some VHF shenanigans on Tipsoo, we backtracked on the trail briefly before leaving it and descending south. 

Sleeping Bear Dunes Naional Lakeshore has a number of SOTA summits - Shauger Hill might be considered to be in the heart of the Lakeshore. Note That the official NPS map shows "Shauger Hill" (E on the map) quite a distance from the USGS coordinates used by SOTA. 

Take M-109 off of M-22 and check in at the entrance station - this is a fee park. I recommend getting a copy of the Lakeshore map to follow the one-way Pierce Stocking Scenic Drive and the numbered features.

See KJ7LSM's nice writeup of this summit. I'll only add that, in March 2025, the gate to the last leg of the road is closed (see the southernmost point of the hike,below, resulting in an 800 foot, 1.7 mile walk up the remaining gravel road. There's room for one or two vehicles at the Y in the road while still providing passage if someone with access wants to pass through the gate.

For my first activation in the Pacific Northwest, I chose South Tiger Mountain. It was a "suggested first summit," a short drive from home, and a relatively easy hike. It was also a 2-pointer, another first for me. 

Here’s a near drive-up 2-point summit that might be part of your plan to visit the Redwoods in SW Oregon.

This turned out to be an easy activation. The road has some rutted sections where having a high clearance vehicle is nice but not necessary. Since we were hosting a S2S Party, 2M was no problem, but we also worked many locals on 2M. There are plenty of old Juniper snags to tie off a mast to for HF. Have fun!

See my full report here 

Summary - Sawtooth Mountain, on the north end of Indian Heaven Wilderness, is a 2.5 mile hike with 1000 feet of gain from the parking lot to the edge of the activation zone. This trip report describes getting to the summit, another hundred feet or so up, with unprotected class three and four traverses/climbing and significant exposure.

Summary - Lemi Rock, in the Indian Heaven Wilderness, combines good trails, a steep bushwhack (not for beginners), and some optional ridge scrambling.  While makes for a longish day, link it with Bird Mountain for a two summit, twelve point outing.  The trip from Portland to the Cultus Creek Campground (day fee or pass required) is about two hours on mosly paved roads.  ATT digital service is good, as is APRS.

Backpacking into North Cascades National Park (US-0055)

Date: September 6-8, 2024

Overview: