“This 80′ steel Aermotor tower, built in 1933, also had cabin living quarters. An L-4 ground house was moved to the summit from Sixteen Butte in 1948. Although the lookout is on emergency standby status, it was staffed full-time during the reconstruction of East Butte Lookout in 1995. The tower is on the National Historic Lookout Register.”1
I joined Tim-N7KOM and Bill-K7WXW for a day of drive-up activations in the South East Corner of Deschutes/NW Corner of Lake Counties Oregon. We planned to do Fox Butte, Quartz Mountain, China Hat Butte and if we had time leftover, hit one of the three first activations of Firestone, East and or Long Buttes. Based on drive time from Bend we decided to start at Fox and see how things went.
The day started off with a commute from Bend, south on US Highway 97 to La Pine then USFS road 22 east bound out of La Pine. I was surprised to find out that NFDR-22 is paved all 30 miles east to China Hat Rd. From the intersection we continued on NFDR-22, right on NFDR-2260 to NFDR-23 until it intersect NFDR-2325 where we jogged to the right about a 100 ft onto NFDR-550 for about .3 miles.
We made the common mistake of thinking we could drive all the way to the top as the access road is in good shape and easily passable in a passenger car but forgot that the reports all tell you NOT to attempt due to a gate across the road about 1/4 mile up. This turned out to be the first setback of the day, as one of us had to guide Bill as he backed back down to the intersection with NFDR-550 where we parked, which took about 15 minutes. So don’t be like us, just park at the intersection and walk.
The hike up ends up being about a mile and has beautiful views to the South, West and East as the road curls around the butte. At about .5 miles the road dips into some nice shade of large Ponderosa trees as you near the summit. The lookout is visible from this aspect and it is impressive.
We were shocked to find out that the tower was not gated so we of course invited ourselves to climb to the top. The views are 360 and tremendous, the steel structure seems very sound and while the cab has seen better days is still used as a backup lookout just in case.
I pulled out my HT and made a few CQ calls, to be answered by none other than Randi – KK7HJL, my YL. She worked all three of us and ended up being the only 2M contact any of us made from Fox Butte. Tim and Bill descended the stairs to begin setting up HF rigs while I continued working 2M to no joy.
We spread out on the large summit and each setup our respective rigs on a different HF band with the intention of doing a round robin activation with each of our rigs setup on a different band and we would jump between the rigs. Tim setup his KX2 on 20M, Bill’s on 40 and I setup the Penntek TR-35 on 17M. Contacts were hard to come by, with only 1 S2S on 17M for me. Bill did ok on 40M with 5 contacts and Tim was killing it on 20m with 8 CW and 1 SSB contact. Bill decided to pack up before I had a chance to work 40 but Tim and I traded off and I was able to collect 5 CW, 2 of which were S2S.
At this point we decided to pack it up and get back down to the car for the second summit of the day, Quartz Mtn. The walk back down was fairly uneventful, other than I slipped on the washed away, outer track of the road and cut a new vent in the knee of my pants… ce la vie, it could have been worse.
Fox Butte is an easy activation IF you are equipped with HF. I wouldn’t rely on 2M unless maybe you bring a yagi to help get your signal to Bend. The roads are in much better than expected shape, and other that the fact that it is a long drive, it was quite pleasant and any passenger car can make the trip.
W7MTB: Amateur Radio Notes 