Champlain Mountain, Maine

Champlain Mountain (W1/DI-004) is one of my favorite hikes in Acadia National Park. The hike up is fun, the views are spectacular and it doesn’t seem to receive the amount of hiker traffic other sites have. The one downside of Champlain is that you are blocked to the west by Cadillac mountain which can be an issue if you are operating VHF due to line of sight.

Summit Information:

Summit Name: Champlain (W1/DI-004)

Location: Acadia National Park

Lat/Long: 44° 21′ 1.8” N/68° 11′ 38.04” W

Date: June 13th, 2021

Parking: Park Pass Required

Points: 1

County: Hancock County

Grid: FN54

Weather: Sunny, 64 degrees

Permit: Park pass required

Full Trip Planning Guide

Difficulty

Views

Solitude

On a Scale of 1 to 5

I decided to hike up along the north trail to the summit as I have hiked it in the past and found it a good work out with great views along the way.

After getting to the summit I pretty much had the summit to myself for the next several hours. I tried HF and only managed one contact. Switching over to VHF I made several contacts into the Canadian Maritimes and some locally. In the past, I have found that Sunday mornings are not always that productive in contacts in general, however the summit is usually quiet.

I made another sat attempt with the ISS but had no luck. Reception at the summit was really good considering the horizon to horizon clearance.

Unlike my previous activation at Schoodic summit, all my gear worked correctly this time. Speaking of Schoodic, I had a nice view of the summit as I was directly 180 south. I used the PeakFinder app on my phone to take cool shots of the summit (see picture above).

One minor issue I had was my phone screen going dark. I’m assuming it was due to the heat. I have had it shut down before on summits when it got too overheated but never just halfway with a dark screen. After 10 miniutes in the shade everything seemed to be working correctly again.

Another issue in bright sunlight is being able to read the screen in general. I have been using the new ham radio logging app, HamRS which has a smal learning curve. I have been using HamLog for years so some re-learning was taking place.