My son Oier has some days free because of carnival holidays, so we've planned a trip to Navarra, (about 2 1/2 hours by car) to pay a visit to my sisters sons, as we use to do as often as we can.
At the same time, my intention was to activate one or more summits on EA2/NV. I needed them to reach the next level of the Euskal Herriko Mendiak award, (Basque Country Mountains) consisting on activating 5 summits on 4 basque territories. This would give me the Haize (wind) level.
On the bad side, frequent rains and low temperatures were expected, and two of the cousins had to celebrate their birthdays, so the activity had to be short. With this conditions I chose two summits, quite close to my sisters village. Sutxu EA2/NV-112, about 65 km far, and Jenariz EA2/NV-163 32 km away.
We arrived to Allo (NV) on saturday afternoon, and started to prepare the carnival celebrations. All the unhabitants (about 3.500) take part, and despite the low temperatures, the participation was massive.
Next sunday, and not too early, we parted from Allo, to Lerin, Miranda de Arga, Tafalla and finally St. Martin de Unx, a very nice and small middle-age village, where we would return later to lunch.
From there, some 10 km towards Lerga left us aside a country road we the snow was quite abundant, and started the path to the first summit. It was easy with less than 250 m slope, but some intermitent rain left us wet and cold. Beside some wind generators I set up the rig, prepared to do a short and fast activation. The conditions were not the best. So, as quick as possible I prepared the 9 m pole, norcal doublet antenna, T1 Elecraft QRP tuner, FT-817 @ 5w, keyer and 8Ah LiFePo battery. Just a quick adjust on 14Mhz CW, spotting, and 24 QSOs on less than 25 minutes.
The rain was not heavy and fortunately there was no wind. around 6 deg. temp was also not too hard. But Oier got quickly bored, as he must be inside the bothy bag, and I forgot the tablet... :-/
Back to the car, and on 15 minutes we were paying a short visit to St. Martin de Unx, enjoying the medieval buildings, while trying to imagine how the people lived on those years. Not too late, the local restaurant gave us back rest and strength for our second activation.
This was on the road back to my sisters home, and 30 minutes later we were, already under a light but persistent rain, at Miranda de Lerga. From there, 2 km of an easy country road drived us to Jenariz. Here the weather was a bit better, allowing us to stay another 30 minutes of activation with the same equipment.
That was our quick trip around some of the beautiful summits of Navarre. Just few people comes here to activate, and so, it deserves some few longer activations. I expect to repeat them next summer on better conditions.