Yellow Jacket Bench is located in the Umatilla National Forest. It can be a drive up summit, or there are places off the final access road NF-40 that you can pull off so you can make the final ascent on foot. It is 30 miles from Walla Walla community college.
There are several times that Google Maps has led me astray on attempting SOTA activations. But this time it worked, it is a straightforward route up main forest service roads. From the SOTA website, you can select "Google Maps" then from directions, enter in start location. It correctly routes you right to the top. NF-40 goes right through the SOTA summit coordinates.
This would be a good mountain bike activation, I chose to park two miles from the peak and the hike up was pleasant, but on this early Nov activation the NF-40 road had about 10 inches of snow already. I believe a high clearance vehicle may be needed for NF-40, it certainly was for the snow I encountered. The exact coordinates of the peak are in a non-treed area. I set up within the activation zone at the edge of the trees (see pictures below).
I activated using 2M. I posted to the Tri-Cities ARC facebook page a few days prior. There is good signal into Walla Walla & Tri-Cities from this peak. You can get the word out that you are looking for simplex QSOs on the Spout Springs Kennewick repeater on 146.620 (tone of 123Hz), you can also hit the Walla Walla repeater at 146.960 (tone of 74.4 Hz).
