Peak 2445 - just another nondescript peak in Oregon’s Coastal Range, or is it? It turns out that this is an easy drive-up peak a little more than a half hour’s drive west of Forest Grove and should be considered a good peak for SOTA beginners.
To get to it the activation zone, one simply has to punch in the coordinates into Google Maps and follow the nice lady’s voice. The activation zone quite literally is on the side of Rutherford Road, a named and reasonably maintained gravel road. The road could be traversed quite easily in a normal family sedan. That said, just as you turn off of Oregon Highway 6, the gradient is over 20% on somewhat loose gravel. A stop in a normal two-wheel drive vehicle on the steepest parts of the road may prove difficult to restart. Keep up your momentum and everything will be just fine.
For those without Google Maps to help them, head west on Highway 6 and go 1.1 miles past the Browns Camp turnoff (leads to South Saddle Mountain W7O/NC-002). You'll turn left and head up steep Rutherford Road for 1.5 miles. One version of Rutherford Road makes a very sharp right turn here - you may need to go to the wide spot past the turn to swing it. Head up this for 0.2 miles and bear right. A very wide spot (pictured below) that's in the AZ will be on the right after 0.7 miles.
There is some question about the accuracy of the given coordinates for the peak, but regardless, once you acquire the ridge line and near the coordinates, everything is in the activation zone. To the west of the given coordinates for the peak is a very large open area that makes for a great operating spot. The actual high point is a mess of unpleasant brush and brambles. Do yourself a favor and just setup in the big open area only feet below the summit.
Cell phone and data reception is present here, but very weak. Spotting is best done via APRS or by “phoning a friend on 2m”. Speaking of 2m, from the summit you are now far enough away from the Portland metropolitan area that getting contacts is a little more difficult. But it may have been the case that it was mid-day during the work week.
For this activation, I setup the rig for 20m SSB. After stressing about a spot I was finally getting a cell data signal enough to launch to self-spot. Very quickly after the spot, I had a pile up of callers interested in a first activation of a one-pointer.
