Weekend trip with portable operatons in the snow

Yesterday Aage LA1ENA and I returned from a weekend trip to the Sveinsbu cabin and the nearby summit Sveinsbuvarden. It took us nearly two hours by skis to reach the summit. We erected two HF antennas, a 88ft doublet and a wire vertical, and tried to make it comfortable in the snow while calling CQ SOTA. I worked 12 stations on 40m, 20m, 80m and 60m SSB and Aage worked about 20 on 40m and 30m CW.

Although it was windy and a few degrees bellow zero it was raining! The rain froze instantly on our clothing and all of our gear. At the end my hands were to numb to operate the cellphone so I couldn't selfspot my last QSYs on sotawatch. We had planned a long activation but after a while we were freezing so we decided to head for the cabin.

When we arrived the cabin it was -8°C inside. We lighted the oven and a lot of candles and after some hours it was almost too hot inside! We erected a temporary random wire antenna outside the cabin but the result was rather poor. Best DX from the cabin was 5B4AIF on 40m SSB worked with 5w.

On our way back to the parking place Sunday we stopped at the summit and did some calls on 2m. I worked LA5OGA on 145.550MHz before we headed home.