UP AND AWAY:
High Altitude Backpacking in the Rockies
By Paul Signorelli , W0RW
Special to The ARS Sojourner

While my XYL was at the Estes Park Quilt Convention I had some time to go up Trail Ridge Road (US Hwy 34) in the Rocky Mountain (CO) National Park and do some backpacking. There are several good hiking trails that lead off the road up into the tundra.

The trails are filled with small Alpine wild flowers, yellow, blue, maroon and white. There was a Pika (Marmot) out looking for food. The valleys below still held the morning clouds floating at 9,000 feet.

My backpack radio is a military PRC-319. I was on 18157.5 USB running 50 watts into an 8-foot whip. The carry weight is only 17 pounds with the lightweight battery pack (20 "C" NiCad cells). I don't use my Sony LiIon batteries at this altitude because I lost 4 of them a few years ago. The pressure fuses on all 4 blew at the same time.

The band was in fairly good condition allowing contacts with East Coast, Texas and Canada as Iclimbed the 12,000 foot peaks operating Pedestrian Mobile. Calling CQ with an “out-of-breath rhythm,” I was sucking oxygen at every level spot on the trail.

After a clear morning of hiking the first storm clouds started blowing through hitting me with a little grapple snow and then sun and then snow again. One of the waves of weather started to cause loud precipitation static in my earphone but there was still no lightning or thunder in the area. At the beginning of one waves of wind I started to feel (and see) small sparks from my handset to my fingers.

I was picking up several KV of static on my antenna, so I collapsed the whip right away and headed down the mountain keeping a low profile. There are no trees at that elevation. The next time I tried to tune my automatic antenna tuner it failed, so I suspect the static damaged my tuner. I thought the tuner was fairly safe because it has a gas filled surge arrestor on the antenna connector to protect against EMP, and another on the output BNC connector. I think a 100K bleeder resistor or a quarter wave shorted coax stub along with a bare drag wire would have prevented the static damage.

There was no damage to the radio but one section of the tuner was damaged. I decided that I would not try to operate my new Elecraft KX1 under these conditions.

After the storm passed, I did get to operate on 20 CW with the KX1 and an 8-foot whip in my rear pocket. I worked another KX1 owned by Don, W7VXS, while I was hiking down in the Moraine Park. There were several bull elk grazing there in the meadow.

Here is a picture of me at the top of the Alpine Ridge Trail. The mountains in the background are the "Never Summer Range."



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Paul Signorelli, WØRW, is a avid QRPers, pedestrian mobile operator and outdoorsman living in Colorado Springs, CO.