Friday, December 2, 2022

W6/CT-032 Oat Mountain


 It was a windy day as I arrived at the trailhead in Michael D. Antonovich park. This park is at the end of Brows Canyon Road. The road has a number of "no trespassing" signs along the way, but it seems you are allowed to drive up, since there's the park entrance. I paid my $5 and drove to the upper dirt lot.

Parking area.

The entrance to the lot is a bit rough, but I was able to get in without bottoming out the sedan I had. The path to the top is a paved road. A short distance up it passes the site of a Nike Missile base, back when the missiles were needed to defend against Soviet bombers. There isn't much left but graffiti in the area.

Views of the destination.

The road continues up at a pretty good grade. There are some flatter sections, but the climb is fairly constant. Shortly below the summit there was a signed gate. I didn't want to go through it, so here I turned and went straight up the hill. It was rather steep, but I was quickly at the top.

Summit ahead!

I tagged the summit, then set up a little below it under some trees. It was out of the wind, which was nice. I had almost lost my hat a few times. I didn't have cell service where I was sitting, but I had had it for most of the hike up. I think if I had walked around a bit I would've found somewhere that had service.

Looking over at the Santa Monica Mountains.

I had limited time, so I only did 20m and 40m, with a few calls on 2m at the end. I didn't get a lot of contacts, but there was no problem activating the summit. Once I was done I took the road back down. I didn't feel like going down the steep grass, so I took it from the summit. It probably would've been smarter to go up that way.

Trailhead: End of Browns Canyon Road in Michael D Antonovich Park
Website: SOTA Site.
Maps: AA6XA SOTA Hikes map.
Route:  Follow the paved road to the summit.
Red Tape: None. 
Video: ham_bitious Youtube


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