N7OLE and I attended the Giant Loop Ride at Crystal Crane Hot Spring near Crane, OR at the end of May, 2024. Being a fairly unpopulated part of the state, there are ample opportunities to grab some first activations so we took advantage. As it turned out, one of the routes that is suggested by the event organizer’s is called Stinkingwater Pass, which happens to be the road that passes nearest to this unactivated SOTA Summit.

Riding our Kawasaki KLX Dual sport motorcycles was our primary mode of transportation to the summits, however, this summit requires about a .4 mile hike up to through some thick sage and juniper scrub.

We found a shady spot to park the bikes just to the south of a cow watering hole. We crossed through the pasture, over two barbed wire fences and started the ascent. On the way down we figured out that if we had walked a bit further north on the road, crossed the cattle grate and turned up along the fence line, we would not have to cross the fences at all.

The hike is off trail though you can follow some cow tracks and natural breaks in the underbrush most of the way up. Towards the top there are lots of lava flows that make the climbing a bit trickier but still overall I’d classify this as an easy hike. We hiked in our motorcycle boot and pants, through lots of pretty desert wildflowers; lupine and Indian paintbrush in full bloom.

We found a nice rock ledge with an adjacent juniper to toss the wire into, just below the true summit, well within the AZ.

Band conditions were not great but we did manage to get 4 contacts on 40M SSB and a couple on CW. I worked Steve – WG0AT on a Summit to summit on 30m cw but he faded hard towards the end and I didn’t count the QSO since I didn’t get a copyable signal report. We did call on 2M FM hoping we could pickup a random down in Burns but nothing heard on this try.

After about an hour of activating we headed back to the bikes to make our way to a lunch stop at Oard’s Store in Buchanan. On the way we were treated to a herd of the areas wild horses having a snack in a meadow just along the road.

The store has gas, food and lots of native jewelry so Randi got a prize for riding so well. We devoured two delicious burgers, Coca-colas and we planned the route to the next summit of the day, Riddle Mountain.

While we used motorcycles to get to this summit, a decent AWD car should have no problem with the road. There is enough space just to the south of the cattle watering hole to park one or two rigs and the hike is relatively quick. Not much in the way of shade so plan accordingly and bring extra water. This is pretty remote country but in the event of an emergency, you could likely get into the HiDARG Repeater on Sharps Butte [147.300+, T162.2]. Cell Service was good most of the time, there is a visible tower array just to the south of the Crane hot springs, which you can see from the summit.