For the last day of my Austrian SOTA activation adventure I contemplated several options. I finally settled on a route suggested by Herbert (OE9HRV), who was an incredible useful source for all my activations here in OE land (check out the other OE trip reports). The route included three peaks, Sünser Spitze (OE/VB-34Ø) – Portlerhorn (OE/VB-366) – Portlerkopf (OE/VB-4Ø8), each awarding 8 points. This seemed to be an adequate finale for my time here. The weather forecast was excellent and I was joined by my wife and brother in law. The only caveat… we had to catch a train at 16:05 local time. To stay within this time-frame, the plan was to hike to the Sünser Spitze first (highest of the three peaks), activate this summit on my HT (VHF) to save some time (setup and break-down of HF equipment) and hike down and along the ridge to the remaining two summits for a VHF and HF activation and still catch the train.

Elevation Profile (click for a larger view)

Trailhead: 5522 ft / 1683 m
Summit:   6765 ft / 2062 m
Elev. gain: 1999 ft / 600 m
Roundtrip: 5.6 mi / 9 km

Compare this summit with my other activated summits

How to get there:
The shortest route from my temp. QTH was to take L51 west, from the medieval town of Feldkirch towards the Furka-Pass. It’s a small winding road, single lane for the latter part, and going through some beautiful country side. The trail-head is shortly after the Furkajoch.  We parked the car on a gravel  strip on the right side of the road.

Parking/Trailhead

View Larger Map

Red Tape:
The road (L51) might be closed in winter.
The gravel strip has room for approx. 10 cars.

The Ascent:

At the TH

The ascent hast no big challenges. Like all the other trails around here, they are well marked with frequent signs leading you in the right direction. The first part led up to an alp over a dirt road. The trail went through a few buildings, which were abandoned for the upcoming winter season. Just an old Pinzgauer was sitting in front of one of the buildings. A short but steep section led us from the alp to a saddle from where we could see all three summits for the first time. From here you have two options to continue – we selected the trail splitting to the right, slightly uphills towards the ridge between the Portlerhorn and the Portlerkopf, to avoid loosing any altitude we already gained. We got great views looking back towards the Furkapass and the surrounding mountains. We reached the top of the ridge right at a small lake with the first summit in the background.

Lake with Sünser Spitze

Continuing along the ridge, we reached another signpost before tackling a pretty steep section up to the ridge between the  Sünser Spitze and the Ragazer Blanken.

The final steps to the summit

Towards the east we could see the summit-station of the ski-area of Damüls and towards the west we enjoyed the snow-covered Swiss-Alps. At this point we had made most of the elevation gain towards this summit. The rest of the trail followed very closely the top of the ridge before a last steep section left us breathless reaching the summit. I am claiming that the views were responsible for being out of breath – others disagree. Lake Constance was clearly visible to the north-west of us. At the south end of the lake… the town of Bregenz. This was my best bet on getting my contacts quickly on 2m .

The Summit:

KØMOS on the summit

The summit has a sharp drop-off towards the north and the usual wooden cross with the summit register. It was still chilly, mainly due to the stiff breeze from the north. My call on 145.5 MHz was quickly answered by OE9GWI (Gerhard). His spot on SOTAwatch drummed up all the support I needed for this summit, including a contact with a Swiss station (HB9AGH – Ambrosi). It was a nice and unexpected contact with a station in Zürich where I had lived and worked for over 10 years. The activation lasted only 20 minutes and we could move on to the next summit but not before taking some snapshots and  enjoying some warm tea out of the thermos.

The view towards Switzerland

Sünser Spitze - Group photo

We followed the same trail back to the mentioned sign-post, but instead of traversing the ridge we followed the ridge to the Potlerhorn. It took us a little more than an hour to get to the second summit, staying close to my timetable. This time we had to share the summit with two other parties. Not a problem since the summit is basically a hump in the ridge and thus provided enough space for my antenna.

Getting ready for HF

Before setting up the HF equipment, I tried the HT on 2M again to see whether I would be possible to get any contacts on this peak as well. The line-of-sight towards Bregenz was clearly blocked by the previously activated Sünser Spitze. Never-theless, OE9HRV (Herbert) answered my call. I could even get in contact again with HB9AGH in Zürich… it took a few tries but after finding the sweet spot on the mountain, we could exchange the necessary info.  All in all I made 15 contacts with stations in England, Sweden, Austria, Hungary, Germany, Poland, Denmark and Switzerland before we moved on to the last summit.

Off to the last summit

Again it was easy to find the way to the last summit. We just followed the trail along the ridge connecting the two summits. The down-climb to the saddle was quite steep and we encountered several more hikers coming up. From the saddle to the summit, the trail was clearly less traveled than before. It followed the ridge-line very closely, sometimes crossing over to the other side only to cross again a little later. Both sides of the ridge  drop off sharply and if you suffer from fear of heights you shouldnt look down too much. It was only 3/4 of a mile to the last summit

Antenna on Portlerkopf

but I started to feel the impact on my knees. I was setting up the antenna for the last time on this trip and thought it might be appropriate to fly the Austrian flag I got from OE9HRV. This time I had no luck on 2m, but Herbert (OE9HRV) was already waiting for me on 20m. Within no-time I had 15 contacts with stations in Austria, Germany, England, Poland, Lithuania, Spain and even Canada (VE1WT) – making this my longest distance contact of the day (approx. 5400 km or 3400 mi).

The Descent:
It’s only a short distance from the last summit to the trail-head;  approximately another 3/4 of a mile. We had to backtrack on the same trail for a while until we could get down from the steep ridge. Needless to say that we missed the train by about five minutes – but in Europe, with its highly developed public transportation system, there is always another train.

Some video impressions:

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!! WARNING !! There are old mountaineers, and bold mountaineers... there are no old-bold mountaineers. Hiking and mountain climbing are potentially hazardous activities particularly in Colorado with its extreme elevations. I am not accepting responsibility for any death or injury resulting from activations based on my trip reports. Proper training, experience, and personal capability assessment is required - enjoy!

Written by: k0mos on October 18, 2011.on July 18, 2012.