Restarting the blog -- SOTA update

 It's been nearly two years since the last blog post, so time to get busy again.  I did have some posts up on the Wordpress version of this blog, but since it has disappeared I'm back to the blogger version. 

It's been an exciting two years.  I ramped up my SOTA activity in 2019 and had big plans to be very active in 2020 the the world turned upside down in March with the pandemic.  After a couple of months of sheltering in place, I got back out in the field again later in the year and have done many summits here in Arkansas since then.  Today I have 842 points working toward my goal of reaching Mountain Goat status at 1,000 points sometime this summer.   I'll use this blog to track the progress.

My last activations was a set of four 10 pointers in western Arkansas that I did over two days.  Two were simple drive-ups and two were  hikes -- one a 1/2 mile bushwhack and one a 5 mile roundtrip hike on the Ozark Highland Trail. You can see here's I've had a busy 2021 in Summits On the Air. 

On the two most recent hikes, the trails I was following were much different.  The first photo is the trail I found on the way down from the Poteau Mountain Wilderness High Point.  You many have to look hard to see it.

Contrast that with the Ozark Higlands trail that leads to the top of Hare Mountain.  The great bonus at the top of Hare Mountain is the picnic table.  There are very few summits in Arkansas where you have a clearing, a picnic table and an antenna support provided. I had left my collapsible fishing pole/antenna support bungeed to a tree at the top of Poteau Mountain the day before, so you can see my Par EFHW at approximately 5 feet.  It worked.