Day 8 & 9...

It was a very wet night at Gull Lake, and the band conditions made activating the park quite difficult.  I got absolutely soaked taking camp down the next morning, and was glad to start driving and warm up.  Today I'm off on a trip through the Canadian Rockies.

My first POTA stop today was at CA-0005, Banff National Park.  I made zero contacts in Banff as the noise floor was S9+20 at every spot I tried.  So I gave up and moved on down the road.  I was really looking forward to operating in Banff, perhaps next time!

Second stop today was CA-0117, Yoho National Park.  What a beautiful spot!!!  But of course it was cloudy and raining.

The band conditions, once again, were not the best.  The propagation was: SFI=162, SN=74, A Index=9, and the K Index=2.  Lot's of deep QSB on the bands as well.

I managed to get 11 contacts in an hour before I had to leave and move on to the next park, CA-0028, Glacier National Park.  This was my first failed activation.  I managed to get one contact, Ken N5HA, in Leesville, LA.  That was it, despite calling for an hour, I had no other hunters.

Two hours later I arrived at CA-0061, Mount Revelstoke National Park, another beautiful location. At this park I managed to get the bare 10 required contacts, and it only took 34 minutes.

Personally I'm finding that POTA is very different out west from what I'm used to in the Eastern part of our country.  There does not seem to be as many operators doing POTA here.  Perhaps SOTA is more active here given the mountains around this part of the country.

It's also quite difficult getting a signal out of these deep mountain valleys, which certainly isn't helping my activation count.