Hiking

Activation Summary

Foel Offrwm is a nice easy 1 point summit with great views on a clear day. I was accompanied by my wife for this activation and so hadn’t alerted for the activation in order to make for a more laid back affair. We started from the Precipice Carpark, crossing over the road and following the well signposted route. That said I manged to ignore the stone with “Foel Offrwm this way” as from memory I thought the track carried on further before veering of to the right. However after a couple of hundred metres and checking the map, it became clear that we should have taken the marked route as pointed out by wife at the time. 🙂 The path meandered up the summit in a zig zag fashion and we were at the summit in less than an hour.

I setup up my station using my Icom Ic705 and an external 4000 mAHr LifePo4 battery. I started on 2m with the SRH770 plugged directly into the IC705 but 2m only yielded 1 QSO. I then moved onto 20m using the 1/4 wave telescopic whip. The IC705 was running 10w and in just under 10 minutes I had a further 7 QSO’s on 20m including 3 S2S’s . This gave me total count of 8 QSO’s with 3 S2S.

Activity Summary	Weather
Date: 11th August 2025 Distance: 8.6 km Ascent: 924 m Max Altitude: 947 m Moving time: 3:57 Total time: 5:42	Cloudy Temperature 18 ℃ Humidity 82% Feels like 19 ℃ Wind Speed 2.2 km/h Wind Direction SE

Activation Summary

I chose to hike up Y Garn as a solo summit, having recently activated the two adjacent summits of Elidir Fawr and Glyder Fawr earlier in the summer. I wanted to try this route from the Nant Peris park and ride car park, as it avoids any road walking or the need to hop on the bus. However it doesn’t seem to be a popular route and I was soon to find out why.

I started the route taking the path that starts from the side of toilet block in the Nant Peris carpark to emerge on A4086, crossing over the road and walking through the campsite in a generally NE direction. On reaching the top of the campsite and following the path through a gate, the path became somewhat obscured by ferns. From here the route starts to climb steeply. There are stiles to cross the walls/fences, although I overshot the path near the start of the climb, and had to follow the 270m contour line for about 50m through waist height ferns, in northerly direction to cross the stile. After crossing the first ladder stile the path became more defined.

This route did feel quite a slog, especially with my pack loaded with HF radio equipment and water weighing in at 11.5 kg. The ascent took about 3 hours with the gradient remaining fairly consistent until reaching the ridge at which you turn right to head for the summit of Y Garn.

On approach to the summit it became apparent that there had been a hatch of flying ants. There were large swarms and although I had applied insect repellent before setting of from the car, this did not seem to deter them. After reaching the summit I dropped down about 15m, where there was a slight breeze blowing over the edge. The breeze seemed to be enough to reduce the flying ants to a bearable level. I quickly made the decision that this was going to be a 2m only activation as the flying ants were becoming quite menacing.

I setup up my station using the Yaesu FT65 with an SRH770 antenna and after around 10 minutes I had 6 QSO’s in the log. I packed away keeping my FT65 with the stock antenna to hand. Just as I was about start the descent I saw a spot from Kevin MW0KXN on GW/NW-031 Esgeiriau Gwynion, and so managed another QSO giving me a total of 7 QSO’s, 1 S2S and 1 complete.

Equipment Used

Yaesu FT65
SRH770 antenna
3D printed holder for the FT65
PoLo logging app on iPad mini

Parking Location – What3Words

///definite.documents.caressing

Interactive Map of the route

The interactive map below shows a track of the route taken. You can zoom in or out to change the scale. The map can also be shown in full screen. The GPX track can also be downloaded using the link below the map.

Download file for GPS

360 view from Y Garn

Tag: Hiking

SOTA Activation Foel Offrwm GW/NW-055

Activation Summary

Equipment Used

Parking Location What3Words

Interactive Map of the route

SOTA Activation Y Garn GW/NW-004

Activation Summary

Equipment Used

Parking Location – What3Words

Interactive Map of the route

Activity Summary	Weather
Date: 15th August 2025 Distance: 3.4 km Ascent: 214 m Max Altitude: 405 m Moving time: 1:15 Total time: 2:58	Partly Cloudy Temperature 22 ℃ Humidity 73% Feels like 23 ℃ Wind Speed 3.8 km/h Wind Direction NNE