Summits on the Air is a popular amateur radio award program that blends hiking with ham radio. The scoring system is designed to reward both the adventurous operators who scale peaks and those who chase them from their home radios. Scoring is tracked separately depending on your role:
Summit Point Values: Every officially eligible peak is assigned a permanent value from 1 to 10 points. This scoring is based primarily on the mountain’s elevation and prominence within its specific geographic association.
Activators (The Hikers): To claim a summit’s points, an Activator must hike to the peak using non-motorized transport and operate using portable power (batteries or solar panels). They must successfully log at least 4 distinct radio contacts (QSOs) to validate the activation. An Activator can only claim points for a specific summit once per calendar year.
Seasonal Bonuses: To reward those who brave harsh conditions, many associations offer a winter or summer “seasonal bonus”—usually adding an extra 3 points to the summit’s base value during challenging weather months.
Chasers (The Operators at Home): Chasers earn the flat point value of the peak simply by making a single successful contact with an Activator. While Chasers don’t have to hike, they can earn points from the same summit multiple times a year if the contacts happen on different days or during completely separate activation trips.
Summit-to-Summit (S2S): When two Activators on different peaks manage to contact each other, they enter a special scoring tier. Both operators receive “S2S points,” which are equal to the combined point total of both summits added together.
The ultimate milestones in the SOTA community are reaching 1,000 cumulative points. Reaching this milestone as an Activator earns you the coveted title of “Mountain Goat,” while achieving it as a Chaser earns you the title of “Shack Sloth.”