W6/SD-010 - Ord Mountain

https://blog.benmook.com/w6-sd-010-ord-mountain/ 2026 SoCal Winter SOTA Fest schedule – 1st – https://blog.benmook.com/w6-sd-080-4633/ 2nd – https://blog.benmook.com/w6-sd-013-east-ord-mountain/ 3rd – (This one) https://blog.benmook.com/w6-sd-010-ord-mountain/ This was my third summit for SoCal Winter SOTA Fest 2026. I woke up in the morning, headed down to the hotel restaurant, and ordered breakfast with coffee. My knees were feeling “okay” but I was worried about doing more summits after East Ord destroyed them. I figured I could try an “easy” summit today so I headed out to Stoddard Mountain, W6/SD-060. Once I got close to the bottom of Stoddard, I parked the truck, slathered on some sunscreen and started a slow ascent. My knees were hurting. About 1/4 mile up, I wanted to make sure I could actually get down without stabbing knife pains, so I walked back a bit, and my knees were screaming. There was no way I could get up and down any summit today, so I continued back to the truck with the plan of heading home to Los Angeles early. Over 2M, I heard two local hams at the Slash X Cafe talking about how they were heading up to Ord Mountain. I interjected, introduced myself, and asked if I could joint them, and they agreed! I headed over to the Slash X to meet up with them, and after a quick chat we were on our way. (I’m leaving out all of details on who/ how we got up there) Once at the top I used a 2M HT and called CQ, which was quickly answered by others activating in the area. Two S2S. From there, I went on 2M CW with a yaesu 817 and got two more QSOs. I didn’t want my hosts to stand around waiting for me to work HF bands, so I signed QRT and packed up. https://sotl.as/summits/W6/SD-010