Stid Hill - W2/WE-070 / Gannett Hill - W2/WE-068
Another weekend, another set of 1 point summits in the Finger Lakes.
On Sunday Nov 2nd, 2025 I activated Stid Hill - W2/WE-070 and Gannett Hill - W2/WE-068.
Both summits are about 15 min away form one another on the east side of Canandaigua lake. The weather on Halloween was horrible and not in a fun spooky way, just lots of strong wind and rain. But Sunday came thru with some amazing late fall weather.
It was sunny with a temp around 40F / 4C, a perfect day to spend in the wood playing radios.
Stid Hill - W2/WE-070
Stid Hill is a local summit that rests within a state wild life management area (WMA) which happens to also be a POTA designation. This allowed me to do another double dip activation for SOTA and POTA. The WMA has a section on the summit of which sits within the activation zone. This meant we got to do some bushwhacking.
I parked along Dugway rd and took an old service road up into park.
Since its officially hunting season here in New York, I made sure that both Crimson and I had our blaze orange on.
The bushwhack to the summit was about a 2 mile hike with a little over 800ft of elevation. Thankfully, the majority of the leaves came down with all the wind on Friday. This made for a much more pleasant hike thru the woods. I also welcomed the increased visibility so I could look out for hunters.
The only negative part of the whole day was all the ticks.. They seem particularly bad this year.
I set up my 40m EFHW Antenna and went to work.
When I activate I like to use headphones to make it easier to hear the dits and dahs. However that doesn’t always allow you to be fully conscious of your surroundings. An added benefit of having Crimson around during activations, besides being very cute is she also doubles as an alert system while in the woods.
I wrapped up the activation with 20 QSO’s all on 20meters. I had some great DX, working 3 chasers on the other side of the pond. And a S2S contact for a little extra treat.
Gannett Hill - W2/WE-068
The summit of Gannett Hill is on private property owned by the University of Rochester, which is home to the Kenneth Mees observatory. Since part of the activation zone touches some of the public trails in Ontario County park, I thankfully did not have to try and get in touch with anyone to ask for permission.
After a quick 1 mile hike to the activation zone it was time to set up for activation #2
Crimson decided to embrace her working dog roots and help set up the antenna.
Since it was getting late and the ticks seemed even worse on Gannett hill, I decided to kept the activation short and called it a day after making 7 QSO’s.
I will say its quite the challenge trying to decode CW whilst trying to grab a tiny tick crawling up your arm all at the same time.
Looking forward to hopefully getting back out there this weekend.
Also, I’m pretty eager for December to roll around so I can start trying getting some winter bonus points. I only started my SOTA journey last April, so this will be my first winter.
And a fun fact.. I’m closing in on my 1 year HAM radio anniversary. I passed my tech exam on opening day of deer season last year on Nov 16th 2024. I harvested a buck, tossed it in my truck and went straight to take my exam with all my hunting gear on.
A day I’ll remember fondly for the rest of my life. I like to joke that I got HAM and Venison on the same day.
One more of Crimson, cause why not.
