10-16-21, Lookout Mountain W6/ND-037

I love my wife.  We decided (at the last minute) to take a weekend trip to Yosemite National Park.  And she was completely supportive of spending our first couple of hours Saturday morning on a nice drive up south of Mono lake in the Inyo National Forest.  We were staying in El Portal on the west side of the park, so we'd have to drive over an hour to get to the east entrance, and then another hour to get to the summit.  We decided to get there directly and then do site seeing along the way back.

Google Maps pretty much takes you to the top of Lookout Mountain, although the last few miles are a dirt road, and as others have pointed out, there's lots of Obsidian in parts of the road that are a little nerve-wracking.  It really wasn't as bad as I expected.  It was only in two or three places up close to the summit, and the rest was pretty well ground into the road.


The views were stunning, so after Michele helped me set up the end fed (she's got a much better aim than I do), she walked around the flat space at the top and took in the views and took pictures.


I did some research on this drive up, and knew there was a nice tree at the top to launch my end fed into, and there was some concrete structure that I could use for a table.  AT&T cell service was working pretty well and I was able to spot out.


Since the car was close by I could have the luxury of an actual chair instead of sitting on the ground.


I made 8 contacts including Peter, WB6POT whom I had actually forgotten to tell I was going to be on a summit so he must have gotten an alert.  I also made 3 summit to summit contacts.  I could have probably sat there for a couple more hours chasing summits, but I didn't want to intrude on "us" time.  We had plenty of Yosemite to see yet, so we took off.





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