Leon & Ken's
"Survivor: Blue Ridge"
Editor's Note: I couldn't possibly tell this story better than one of the "Survivors" (Ken, W6CPA), so here is his version:
"The road to
Blueridge crosses several of Mt. High's ski runs. Once they start
making snow the site is inaccessible by car. The professionals
access it during the winter by snow cat or helicopter. We were
trying to install a new controller which has been on the market
for two months. It has a lot of bugs in the firmware. It wasn't
working correctly so I went up to flash the latest firmware to
it. During the flashing process I made a mistake and wiped out
the firmware in the controller. I had to pull the controller,
bring it home and try to get the firmware back in. I was
successful, but I didn't get done until late in the evening. I
drove back that night and the resort had begun making snow and I
couldn't drive to the site.
Since we didn't want Blueridge and the Vegas link to be down for
five months, Leon (KC6JAR) and I decided to backpack the
controller into the site. We went back the next weekend just at
the tail end of the first winter storm. We actually packed up
everything we needed to survive in case we got stuck up there. We
started first thing in the morning, hiked in 4 miles or so,
installed the controller and made it back to Wrightwood for a
late lunch. Pretty crazy huh?"
Ken (W6CPA)
Leon (KC6JAR)
