https://video.benmook.com/videos/watch/2802261b-062a-4c33-8a61-edc424593345 https://blog.benmook.com/w6-nd-224-government-peak/ I spent the weekend camping in the area and planned 4 or 5 summits to hike while I was out there. It took me some time to actually leave the house, so by the time I got to the desert it was much later than I would have liked. As such, I started my SOTA day with the easiest one – Government Peak. This is basically a drive up, however, I took many wrong turns on the maze of roads. Recent rains washed out a chunk of one such road and my rear tire fell into the resulting hole, and with an open differential the tire just spun. I needed 4wd to get out. Not far from where I got stuck, I stopped the truck and hiked the remainder of the road up. You could drive straight to the top, but I was in the vehicle for a few hours already and wanted to stretch out a bit. The top is a narrow ridge with a few communication equipment shelters and some towers. I couldn’t locate a benchmark, but perhaps it was behind a fence. I stretched out an EFHW antenna and leaned my mast on an unused utility pole to support the wire. Worked 7m and 14m CW; didn’t bother with 2m FM on this one. Wanting to get one more summit in before it got dark, I packed up the equipment and headed to the paved road. This would be a good one to do in the summer as you get 3 extra bonus points and the risk of environmental exposure can be reduced by driving to the top. https://sotl.as/summits/W6/ND-224 Tue, 02 Jun 2026 22:09:17 GMT https://validator.w3.org/feed/docs/rss2.html PeerTube - https://video.benmook.com https://video.benmook.com/lazy-static/avatars/298a662a-dfdd-4a9f-b98f-8ffd38337b70.png https://video.benmook.com/videos/watch/2802261b-062a-4c33-8a61-edc424593345 All rights reserved, unless otherwise specified in the terms specified at https://video.benmook.com/about and potential licenses granted by each content's rightholder.