After volunteering all week at the 2025 Youth on the Air camp in Denver, I decided to rent a Jeep for a day and do a satellite activation on some new grids a couple hours away up in the mountains. I scouted the grids around Denver and found a good grid corner at DM68/69/78/79 that was accessible via dirt roads and was located on national forest land which made is a POTA site as well. My plan was to pick up the Jeep Friday evening and head out early Saturday morning to get the grids so I could be back from my evening flight to Kansas City.
I invited my friend Anderson, K4RAY, along with me as he’s a big POTA guy and had some QRP equipment he wanted to try out for an activation. We decided to take the jeep as far as we could, park it at the end of the trail, and then hike the last half mile or so to the grid corner where I would work the satellites and he would throw an antenna up into a try nearby to try to make an HF POTA activation. I was able to use Degree Confluence Project to help understand the trails and terrain in the area as there were numerous visitors to this grid corner in the past. I also learned about the geocache that was located at the grid corner.
After arriving and helping Anderson get up and running, I waited for the couple satellite passes I was going to try. I should note that I did not advertise this activation much; I posted on hams.at to give some heads up, but I wasn’t sure how timing would work out so didn’t want to commit to numerous passes. In the end I hopped on the 6/21/2025 1509z AO-91 and 1555z ISS passes where I made six and nine contacts, respectively. This was enough to guarantee LoTW QSL (to count toward my reverse VUCC) as well as formally call the Pike National Forest POTA entity activated.
By the time I finished my passes, Anderson was only a few contacts away from his QRP POTA activation. I packed up and filled out the geocache logbook while I waited. Once he finished that, we made a 2m and 70cm contact with each other to give us each hunter credit and got ready to leave.
The hike and drive back was pretty fun; I have long wanted a Jeep, so we took the opportunity to drive down a few of the dirt roads a bit to explore. Since we had time, we decided to take the long way back to Denver through the mountains making a stop in Frisco for lunch. I haven’t been through any of these ski towns before and was surprised to see how busy they were in the summer!
If you’re staying in Denver with a car and have a half a day to explore, this grid corner is a good one. It is relatively easy to get to and nicely suited for HF and satellite operations. The view was pretty great too!
