The first leg of our trip to the Northern Cape was down to Maclear then we made our way up Naude’s Nek pass to Alpine Swift High Altitude Training Resort where we stayed the first night, we have learnt over the past few years, is to tap into the local knowledge of the people in the area, Speaking to one of the ski guides, he informed us of the conditions to the top of the mountain and that a 4×4 was a must, he also said that one should be in low range at all time this is mainly to prevent the clutch and break dices from over heating, he mentioned that a number of vehicles brake discs crack when over heating when driving through the ice cold water coming off the maintain.
Early Friday morning 20 December we traveled 30 plus kilometers to Tiffindell where we planned on activating ZS/EC-001 Ben Macdhui, we thought it best to obtain permission from the manager of Tiffendell ski resort before ascending to the summit
Once we reached the top, we set up the station, after numerous call with no results I changed the direction of the antenna this enabled us to make 9 contacts in total of which two were on 10,130 MHz with Chris Gossard ZS1CDG and his daughter Pino ZS1ZU, the other contacts were on 40m, Ed ZS6UT, Brian ZS6BV, Keverne ZS1ABU, Gert ZS1ELA, Johann ZS6DC, Lionel ZS6DPL and Christi ZS4CGR In general the band condition were not that great , so we took some time to look around before we set off for our next summit which was Carlton Hill ZS/NC- 058
After a quick lunch at Tiffindell we set off for Carlton Hill in the Nothern Cape which took us longer than expected, as the unpaved roads leading to Tiffindell from both directions are very bad, so basically the average speed was around 40 to 50 k/m/h. We arrive at our overnight accommodation just after 18h00, which was on the farm where Carlton Hill is situated, we had made prior arrangements with the land owner to access the mountain His wife and daughter were kind enough give us the directions, the drive to top was easy going, but once at the top it was a good walk to firstly find a open space between all the different communication towers, what we thought to be a good spot Adele checked to make sure we were still in the AZ at first it was slow going but we were fortunate the bands opened and we were able to make 16 contact
Pleased with the outcome of our activation and our trip, which meant we had achieved our object of activating at least one summit in each of the regions, we started our long trip home. Thanks once again to all our chasers and for you support
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