If you are just tuning in, there has been a lively conversation around POTA awards taking place over the past few weeks over on the PN&R Forums. I'd been looking at the OG POTA awards program, with its seemingly endless lists of flora and fauna. I was recently awarded The Western Prairie Fringed Orchid Hunter Award. What does that even mean?
When I started to talk to activators about the awards program, the majority said that they don't pay much attention to them. Instead, nearly all of those folks did POTA to accomplish a personal goal, like Jim WB0RLJ and his streak of activations. A week ago Jim was up around 1,100 consecutive activations, most of them from US-4011 Chalco Hills. Bob WC1N is setting small goals -- last week he finished up doing all of the POTA references on Cape Cod.
My own experience. is similar. It was fun in the early days to pick up both hunter and activator awards, and I worked hard to get to 100 activations over the course of a year. Once I hit that goal, I rarely looked at the awards page. I think part of the reason is that the kinds of awards that someone might always have an interest in, like Hunted All States, is one-and-done. Do it, and then what? The original thinking around a new awards program, to be sponsored by PN&R, was to have some amount of overlap with the OG certificates like Hunted All States, but to have them reset each year to keep them fresh.
From there the conversation veered into whether it was possible to make a "fair" program, given the wide range of park availability across the country. You can see the problem here...if you love on the coast, you sometimes need to use a vertical, because a wire would stretch over into another park. In the middle of the country you need hotel reservations and a really good map. Paul W7PFB brought up the idea of using grid squares, which was intriguing.
POTAmap showing parks in the US
Throughout all of this there was just something in the back of my mind nagging me. I kept coming back to why I even thought that POTA needed a new program. What I realized is that my initial push was because the OG POTA awards lean really hard into Park-n-Bark activating -- parking in a lot somewhere and just cranking out hundreds of Qs -- and that runs counter to everything I love about POTA. What I really want to promote is for people to get out of their cars and into the woods.
When I really thought about it, I realized that the entire reason I started POTA News & Reviews is to create a source of stories about hiking that include a POTA activation. The focus is on the hike, not the activation. If you look at some of my articles you'll see the pattern: Three thousand words about the rock formations in the Santa Cruz mountain range that features a paragraph about the activation. As I told one of the gang, the Park-n-Bark crowd is not coming to PN&R to read my longform articles about forest succession (and oh there was an activation).
When I'm working on just about any project, one of my most powerful tools is to take a step back and ask, What is this really? Taking a moment to consider a problem from a few different sides is the key. What was I trying to accomplish here? Who am I talking to? Why do I even care?
What came out of that internal dialogue was some clarity around PN&R, its audience, and even my own ambitions. I tend to have these kinds of think sessions walking around our local cemetery...it gives one perspective.
So, what is the purpose of PN&R?
I think PN&R is here to encourage people to get out of their cars and go into the woods. Part of that is writing articles that give activators a look at what is in those woods, and also to share that information among those of us who hike. I was a hiker long before I came across POTA, but it's POTA that gives me a reason to go hiking now.
I realize that the core audience is really tiny! There just aren't that many of us who consistently hike to our activations. But I also think that people who don't hike in also like to read the trip reports, and for some the site will be aspirational.
Where does that leave the idea of a PN&R awards program?
The answer to that question came from the SOTA folks. SOTA offers the Mountain Goat award, given when an activator reaches a total of 1,000 activation points. Many SOTA hills are only worth 1 point, so it can take years to achieve Mountain Goat. When someone attains the goal it's a cause for celebration among the entire community.
The POTA equivalent is a new PN&R award: The Pack Mule. To earn the Pack Mule certificate, an activator must submit logs showing a minimum of 100 POTA activations that were accomplished solely by hiking, starting January 1st, 2026. There aren't a lot of rules other than you have to be a minimum distance from any vehicle (currently it's half a mile but the number is being fine-tuned). My feeling is that it'll take a moderately active activator two to three years to reach the goal. I did 100 in a single year, from summer 2024 into the start of 2025, but man, that was a tough slog!
The Pack Mule fits perfectly with PN&R's philosophy: Get out of the car and into the woods! Why would anyone drive to some of the most beautiful open spaces we have and then just sit in a parking lot, or at a picnic table next to their car? I can't fault someone for having fun, and clearly those folks are, but I just don't get it.
We'll start filling in the details of the Pack Mule in the next few weeks. We'll also build a leaderboard and a prominent way to recognize those who achieve it.
I wonder who will be the first PN&R Pack Mule?
3 Responses
The Pack Mule award is such a great idea! I am definitely in.
I will be staying tuned to see how it pans out on turning in logs, etc.
How will it be verified that activators hike the required distances, other than the honor system? More curious than anything. If people want to fake their way to “win” an internet award, so be it. But it would be fun to see maybe “photographic evidence” with a selfie from the station location. Even if it doesn’t prove a distance, it would just be fun to see people having fun in the wild with portable radio.
I think there’s no way to prove that someone did all 100, especially these days when you can fake just about any kind of image. At the end of the day, if someone wants to lie to everyone about something that truthfully isn’t all that important, karma will catch up with them at some point.
That said, you are absolutely right about seeing some of the hikes. A few will end up as PN&R Site Reviews, probably, but maybe we could build a page that just has little blurbs and photos (and videos!) from people who are working on the Pack Mule. Definitely we’ll include some of that in the This Week In POTA newsletter. I do plan to to have a page ready by Jan 1 that has the Pack Mule rules and a leaderboard, that’d be a good spot.
Shane I just saw your video, that was very cool. Glad you were able to drop in to the podcast. It’ll be interesting to see how long it takes for the first award…I think it would take me about two years, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see one in a year.