Howdy!

Starting in December, I will be once more organizing some weekend outings in the Houston area.  There will be hiking/rucking as before, but now that it is cooler there will be camping as well (though probably more in January since reservations are badly overbooked, anymore).  The more interest, the more willing I'll be to book reservations a month or more out so we have spots available.

I am putting together a calendar to help plan things around everyone's schedule, tentatively I have;

12/5; Day-Hike, Spring Creek Nature Trail.  This is a nice trail that weaves between some water features in a flood plain north of some neighborhoods.  I haven't been out here before, but it looks like a good hike.
12/6; Day-Hike, Seabrook Shoreline.  Hike from the Kemah-area restaurant district up along the shoreline north & double back for lunch

12/11(evening)-12/13; Primitive Camping, Hiking, Lake Houston Wilderness Park.  This is very tentative, since I am still determining how to go about securing a primitive site; I may need to change this to one of the other nearby parks and will update.

12/19; Day-Hike, Fishing, Tom Bass Regional Park.  This series of municipal parks string together to form about 7 miles of trail along park and golfcourse space.  There is also a large pond stocked with trout, bass, and catfish that may be fished without a permit.  Because of Covid I assume the BBQ grills in the area are off limits, but I bet there's no rule against bringing a grill/stove of your own to prepare a meal if you desire.

Please chime in if any of this looks interesting, or if you'd like to suggest/host anything yourself.  Hammer's build party this Saturday will hopefully attract a fair number of Houstonian Arfcommers, and I hope we can continue such meetups as an ongoing thing.

Tagged for interest.

Spring Creek trail is near me and is nice and paved pretty much the whole way with a couple of gravel detours

I think it's all the way open now but there might be a section on The Woodlands side they are still working on as I haven't been that far in months.

HCP4 Trail Site

SPGW Brochure

Bayou Land Conservancy Page

I will bump this thread in light of the big build party at Hammer's being delayed until next weekend.  A few of us folks interested in doing these outings will meet up that day, and figure out some more details that I'll post here.

Update;

I am cancelling the 12/5-12/6 events for now, since I'm moving that weekend & Hammer is doing his build party.

Interested in the remaining events.

Bump for interest; anyone interested in a day-hike for 3-4 hours in the Houston area this coming weekend?

I've booked a primitive camping site about 2 miles down the Ameritrail in Lake Houston Wilderness Park arriving Friday Jan 8 and leaving the 10th. This trail travels along Peach Creek and the camp site is close to the confluence of Peach Creek and Caney Creek. I'm considering bringing a canoe and fishing gear to have something to do while there. PM me or Barnbwt if anyone is interested in meeting up. Alternatively we can Mountain bike or ruck. Barnbwt, MMCFPD, and I rucked this trail in the late summer making it a loop and clocking about 10 1/2 miles. Post in the thread if you would like to be included in updates.

@barnbwt
@mmcfpd
@belinTX  
@austin4130
@bishop3

Attached File

In for updates. I just found out today I'm probably having surgery sometime in January so it's a little iffy.

@bollox Could you point out where you expect we'd start from (I'm guessing the circled tent is the target site)?  Also the source for that map you used.  A Gaia or similar route plot would also be nice to help show everyone exactly what's in store for them

Also, if someone can figure out whether we need to have licenses to fish there would be helpful.  That small pond near the south end turn of the trail looked really nice last time.  Probably need to have someone bring a couple cutting boards & knives for cleaning/filleting in case we manage to catch something worthwhile, too.  It's been way too long since I tried to actually prepare & cook stuff on the trail that wasn't dehydrated.

I have a couple packs & sleeping bags (and maybe a tent, no promises on that one) I can loan out to folks who want to try their hand at backpacking but lack some of the gear.

You Houstonians have no idea how nice you have it down here, weather-wise.  Before I moved here I was camping in the Lake Texoma region, and just had to tolerate freezing my ass off every campout from November through about March (low 20s)

Added the probable parking area and camp site labelled. I can send a .gpx to any takers. Its about 2 miles of relatively flat trail hiking. No restrooms or plumbing so we'll need to pack in water and a spade. Map is here: LHWP Map

@bollox

Note that when you tag people it is uppercase/lowercase sensitive and they won't get a notification unless its exactly like their username.

I've got young kids and we're crazy busy at work - I won't have any outdoors time without my kids tagging along for a while

Bump for updates. I'm planning on making it to the state capitol in Austin on Jan 6th if we're needed for more than just celebration;otherwise, I'd be interested in this if It's kid friendly.

I don't think kids would be unwelcome, especially if it gets more people involved, but this is hiking out to a primitive campsite so they'd need to be prepared for that (have the requisite gear & be able to carry it out there).  For my part I'll try to refrain from swearing, lol.

I'll second that... Barnbwt will try to refrain from swearing.

JK. I'm thinking of bringing my son but he has some competing activities.

@Austin4130
@MMcfpd
@barnbwt
@belinTX  
@Bishop3

Cancelled camping trip to reschedule. I'll be heading to DC for the "wild"ness and it would be a pretty quick turnaround to make this trip happen. It's open now, if some of you have a date preference let me know and I'll try to accomodate.

Just found this thread.
Would be interested in meeting ARFcom locals considering the shit show that may start.

Same here, tagged.

+1

Looks like a little bump in interest. I've PMed folks who have expressed interest to get alternative comms info just in case Arfcom is unpersoned. We'll be looking to do a get together this weekend but don't know what yet. Hope to see y'all out there.

Tag as well.

Concur

Yep, in for that too.  Any of you do amateur radio?  Or GMRS?

Or should there be another thread for Houston area comms?

Get on the Arf Discord thread & get signed up.  Yes we'll need radio nerds.

My little hiking clique is trying to stand up a mini forum with several topics (just hiking and comms at the moment) but it's meant more for folks who show up to the outings (and would be redundant to the big Discord HTF thread)

We'll be doing more radio stuff in the near future, though, so make sure you can keep in touch

Discord?  That will just get shut down dude.  But I'll check it out.

Discord?  That will just get shut down dude.  But I'll check it out.

Well there's no info in the thread.  And it looks like the captcha is broken so I can't send an email or PM.

How secure is discord? Obviously with the Parlor security shitshow, that’s a concern with PII.

It's not about security, guys, it's about redundancy.  For example, we were able to pass around the backup server IP address quickly & easily.  It's expected to be infiltrated, and it can be shut down.  But it makes blinding us more complicated.

Tagged for a gtg.

I think I'll be duping this thread on Discord going forward, for the inevitable future disruptions.  Not set up yet, but probably a good idea to get situated over there.

Not at all.  They're pretty leftist and regularly deplatform groups.

I started a HAM  thread ..  we have a Signal group going   as well as I am on the discord group
https://www.ar15.com/forums/Hometown/Any-ham-Guys-in-the-Houston-area-/8-651034/?page=1&anc=-1

We'll be getting together for lunch on Saturday and likely doing a short ruck on Sunday. PM me or post in the thread if you are interested. While you're at it you can send me alternative communications info. Thanks.

What is the name of the discord channel? I searched arf, arfcom, ar15....and can't find anything.

I would like to get in on this as well.   I really enjoyed the meetups that we use to do about 10 years ago.

Last call everyone. If you want to meet for lunch Saturday or the ruck on Sunday PM me preferably with an alternative contact method. I'll email the details to you.