W6ML Team (John/W6JTB, Randy/W6SW, Ron/WQ6X & Jim/W6KC)
at 8,000 Ft Elevation in the Eastern High Sierra 

This was our 10th year operating county expedition in Mono County. We achieved our best results to date. We finally shook all of the computer bugs and successfully ran CT networked with shared serial numbers. It was fun to see the last 10 rate counter occasionally shoot up 400 per hour and to send chat messages to each other over the network. Our first hour actual was 263 QSOs. 

Once again we had our traditional pre-CQP warm up dinner at the local Chart House Restaurant. We linked up for the second year with another Mono County expedition, W6JA (W7AB & W7FD). We invited W6PH, who was operating about 100 miles south in Inyo county, to join us for dinner. He was unable to make it, however, he took a rain check for next year. 

This year I (W6KC) was able to spend some time in Mammoth before being joined by the rest of the crew (W6SW, W6JTB & WQ6X) for the CQP weekend. While I was there by myself, I enjoyed doing a bit of fishing in the early evenings. The first night I went out about 6:30 pm and promptly caught one nice sized rainbow trout that I cooked up for dinner that same night. The next evening I went out again and had quite a different experience. After fishing for about 30 minutes, without results, it was almost dark and I was about to quit. Just then I noticed that about 15 ft to my left were 3 bears. A mother and 2 cubs were walking along the shoreline. I quickly decided to back away and give them their space. I had to leave my fishing pole where it was cast out into the lake. As I backed away the bears came to where I had just been fishing. One of the bears got tangled in my fishing line and I could hear the line going out as they passed by. They went about 25 ft and just stopped and lingered. I slowly went back to my fishing pole and began to reel it in. The line was coming from the direction of the bears and was getting stuck on something. I kept reeling and it finally got free and I was able reel it all the way in without losing my leader. It was almost totally dark by then and I quickly retreated to the relative safety of my car and drove off. That's the closest I hope I ever come to catching a bear with a fishing pole. No fish for dinner that night, but a good story why I had to let a big one get away. 

Be sure to checkout the on-line logs from the CQP operations in Mono County.

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