12 February 2017, SOTA on YO/EC-572 "Chicera Neagră"

Essential summit info for activators

Target summit: YO/EC-572 "Chicera Neagră" - www.sota.org.uk/Summit/YO/EC-572
Our Route: Easy to moderate trail and gradient. Short, about 2.4 km from bottom to top. We chose to climb right through the middle of the creek, which was frozen solid. On the upper half we continued on a logging dirt road which was very steep, but dry and without snow. This trail is probably very muddy in other seasons. The GPS recorded track can be seen and downloaded here: www.wandermap.net/en/route/3507560-chicera-neagra-yoec-572-gps/ .
Summit conditions: Open, but the treeline is very close, at some 20 meters. Many fences, but with the gates open (actually there were no gates at all, just wide spaces left without any barrier). Expect dogs, cows, sheep in the summer.

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Activity report

For today's summit we were undecided. Yesterday the temperature was around -7 degrees Celsius at noon. The weather reports for Sunday seemed decent, so Saturday evening we thought to give it a go. We looked at two other summits before settling on Chicera Neagra (Black Peak).

It was cloudy and gloomy as we left home around 9:30 AM. Nearing the mountains the mist got thinner and later it finally gave way to a very sunny day. It was cold, though, and most of the climb was in shade. The trail we initially chose was a few tens of meters to the left of where we ended up walking, the middle of the creek. It was frozen solid and, despite being very slippery, it provided the best route to the top. Probably during warmer months it wouldn't be wise to walk through there, but today was pretty OK. About halfway up we lost the creek and instead went ahead on a very steep dirt road. The final stretch, no more than 200 meters, we climbed on very deep snow, but with a crust that gave way only a couple of times.

At the top we chose a spot near a barn. It was sunny and quite pleasant when the wind didn't blow. After setting up we started calling in 2m and 70cm. We logged only a few QSOs, so we swtiched to 17m and spent half an hour there. Then we rewired the antenna for 20m and spent another 40 mins at the station before turning it off and calling it a day. We managed to make about 76 contacts between us and one S2S with a ham in Norway.

A big thanks to all our chasers! 73!