EA6/MA-034 (Puig de Ferrutx)

12/May/2017    EA6/MA-034 (Puig de Ferrutx)

Looks a bit like a big sleeping lion to me ...

Friday the .. 12th ! Must have been a bad day for me ...

This summit is quite a challenge, but I got all the info and instructions I needed from Franz, OE5FSM, so what could go wrong ?
Franz was the only activator so far, to visit this summit in 2015, and now I know why ... 

My second B&B was near the city of Artà, in the North-Eastern part of Mallorca, and very close to this summit. While driving along the coast, I already took some nice pictures of Puig de Ferrutx, it looked quite impressive.

The instructions were to park at the Ermita de Betlem at position 39.73628, 3.31224 , and take the path to the left, and keep on walking ... for roughly 2 hours ! As Franz wrote : you can`t miss the trail, but it`s a long hike with up and downs.

But I must have been sleeping when I saw a fairly large parking place along the road, and not checking my GPS if I was already far enough. So I set off from the point you see on the map ... and there was a path I could follow ... so no problem !

Oops ... my mistake!

Now the path I took doesn't look any longer than the one I should have taken. But it hasn't been used for a long time I guess, so after a while, it's not clear where the path is, and I had a lot of difficulty getting around a summit called La Talaieta.

Summit looks so close ... but it was still a looooong walk !

Anyway, I got to the point where my path joined the correct one, and also met three Germans who also wanted to go to Puig de Ferrutx. Good luck after bad luck ... these people had a good GPS and lots of experience, so after that all went well, and I had some nice company. 

Tired or worried ? Who ? Me?

The activation was succesful with 37 QSO's CW and SSB, all on 20m, including one DX contact wirh K1R0.
Here a map of my QSO's (from Log2Map by ON6ZQ):

Then I made the second mistake of the day ...
The Germans had gone back after taking some pictures on the summit, so I had to return alone.
Getting off the summit was no problem and I also found the point where I met the Germans. Now what to do : follow the path to the Ermita de Betlem, or try and find back the path I took. Of course I had to get back to my car, so I took the risk and walked back my path. 

In short : I got lost at some point , and it took me about half an hour to get back on track ... resulting in a lot of delay, and having to cancel the second summit I had planned for that day. 

Lesson learned : you can never prepare too much, and always double check if you are on the correct starting point !

Still, while being lost, I could take this nice picture, just don't ask where exactly I took it, hi.

Nice rock, but where is my track ... ?

(to be continued ...)