We are finalizing our plans for our 4th Hike and have looked at several dates but it looks like 17/18 will work well for most folks.

We will also be targeting the Kansas City Area this time around and @KC215 has a location or two that seem to work well including Ernie Miller Park and Killcreek park.

If you would like to attend please let myself know and I will get you on the list.
your week!
Have a great rest of

Final Date and time has been set at Ernie Miller Park.

909 North, KS-7, Olathe, KS 66061

Meet up Time is 10 am on the 18th. No rifles at this event bring an extra 10 pounds instead.

If you have ANY questions please post here in this thread, IM myself or KC215, or send an email at [email protected]

Good luck!

What part of Kansas are you guys located?  Missouri has several on our western border who might cross over

Kind of all over.  We're trying for an event near Amarillo TX on the 30th or 31st, but I think we can make anything work afterwards.

Are you talking up North or South?

We have several in the KC area. We're having a night hike near Jefferson City on Saturday if any of you guys can make it

I’m up in NE KS near Leavenworth.

Awesome are you willing to travel?

I’m slowly putting together a contact list with locations of anyone interested in staying in contact if arf is shut down again.  APC activities would be a great way to build camaraderie and get people out.

You really should post in the Kansas HTF to get some interest. I think people are ready.

Will do.  

Added January 30th event.

I might be in but have to close my business to join Saturday events.  Because I run Project Appleseed in KS and put on other events I already lose a lot of Saturdays but if the weather sucks maybe business will be slow anyway.

If I can make it work I'll be there.  Not sure I'm ready for 45 pounds but I'll see what I can do.  Are you bringing a scale?  

Sunday events are less financially painful for me and, even if we started at noon or 1:00 or 2:00 for church going, could be done easily in daylight.  Purely my selfish interests.

I'm totally ok with bumping it around or even having two days.

Main thing is getting folks out and about.  

Do whatever works for you and everyone else best and if I can make it work then so be it.  I'll see if there's anyone else I can get to come.

It would probably be a good idea to have Sunday as a back up in case Saturday is horrific weather and Sunday is better.

ETA - I meant to put my first post in the KS HTF so am going to duplicate it there.  Hopefully you will get good turnout.

Is this a carry all your gear hike?  We usually haul plate carriers and rifles on our hikes so wondering if thats the plan here?  I'm going to try to cross over and come.  I guess this time Missouri and Kansas will be on the same side

If I can make it I'll just be bringing a pack.  

KS is now a constitutional carry state that has always been open carry legal even before concealed carry was first legalized.  I am not a lawyer and don't have a clue how all that applies to non-residents beyond CCW reciprocity.

If full battle rattle is the plan a friendly call to the Sheriff by NotCaliforniaLegal might be a good idea to prevent a panicked charge by cops who get calls of the local park's hiking trail being taken over by insurgents.

Table Mound is a fairly traveled trail and since this our first outing, along with the current political environment we may want to be low key just for this first one to keep the variables to a minimum.

I asked @ben as well before posting and he's had some pushback in the past, and he tends to lean towards the extra weight unless we have a larger group.

This does NOT mean that future hikes will be extra weights, as if we want to do the challenge we will need to get a good feel for our equipment.  

There will be a minimum of two more hikes before May and I want to have folks in full gear as quickly as possible.

This is a free country so if you want to bring your equipment that's fine, but  for this first one lets just focus on the weight and the hike, and we can coordinate future hikes from there.  

The wife and I just finished a 3.3 mile flat road test hike.  I had a 36 pound pack and she had a 28 pound pack.

We did an hour on the bikes before this.  

Here’s my Strava stats.
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The wife is planning on coming too.  She was a Philmont Scout Ranch Ranger in college leading 2 week excursions in the New Mexico mountains.

She’s hiked the Elk City Lake trails before, but not this one, and says the ones she has been on are deceptively technical as far as being rocky and having little gullies to clamber through.

California, have you done the trail you’ve picked out for us?

I survived our little test hike today just fine but that was 10 pounds light and smooth flat roads.  Not too sure about going big and may take Ben’s advice to go light to avoid injury.

About a decade and half ago when I was in scouts its not too technical except towards the end (for Kansas) but even that is pretty manageable.  My brother hiked it 3 months ago without too much trouble.

I'll see about coming up the day before and doing a dry run if I can get approval to not have to quarantine for a week due to Covid Protocols for work.  

I’ll take your you and your brother’s words for it.

The biggest concern will be mud and if it’s a disaster we could always take to the roads.

Thanks!  That was my understanding.

I’ll plan to do the 6 miles this time either way (35 or 45 pound pack).  If I only pack 35 pounds and end up getting bonus miles  so I can serve as a witness for others that’s ok.

Way back when APC was first starting in GD there were some links posted with info about upgrading an Alice pack with a much better belt and shoulder straps.  Any idea what those links are?

We have modern Mountainsmith internal frame packs but I’d like to breathe some new life into the large Alice pack I used in the Infantry.

@Lomshek - This is what I used.

http://libertytreeblogs.blogspot.com/2011/04/building-hellcat-hybrid-ruck-from-us.html

Thanks!

I am moving back to Johnson County in a couple weeks so I'll keep an eye on this thread. Do we have any or many participants/members from JoCo here?

There are a number of people in the KC metro area that are interested.  Not sure if they're able to make it this time.

Be glad to have you join us at this one or at future events.  We'll set up dates for another couple/few this weekend and post those dates.

Crossposting this from the KS HTF.  The APC is up and running in Kansas!

Hoooooo boy!

That was a spicy meatball of a hike for this guy!

Thanks to everyone for coming!  I enjoyed the curbstomping.

@Notlegalinclaifornia did a great job putting this together and @Tactical_Bacon kept a watchful eye on me at the rear.  Thanks!  I'm sure my breathing sounded like a Hoover with a broken belt a few times as I was pushing hard to hang on.

My pack was just a smidge under 50 pounds without water.  I carried a 26 ounce bicycle water bottle to drink from with two 20 ounce Dasani bottles in an external pocket.  Besides that I had my trusty M&P Shield with two spare mags on me and a few packs of Clif Blocks, one Clif Bar and a Hammer Gel in my pockets if I needed them.  I ended up going so hard that I just barely pounded one pack of Clif Blocks at the halfway point and one water refill.

This was the roughest, most technical trail I've ever done.  Parts of it were your typical smooth dirt/rock trail, some sections were pretty muddy and some segments were ridonculously rugged ups and downs with rocky ledges that had us grabbing branches and roots to assist climbing.  It was extremely tough going for me as the slow one of the group.

I started out suffering right off the bat with a belly too full of the mac and cheese I wolfed down for lunch.  I think our first mile was about a 17 minute pace and had me almost going anaerobic.  I'm glad the pace was that fast because we had to make the 2 hour time cut and there's no way I'd have pushed that hard for that long without someone ahead of me setting a fast pace.

By mile 2 I was doubting my ability to keep the pace and started lagging but about mile 3 or 3.5 started getting my second wind as my stomach emptied (the right way thankfully).  Tactical_Bacon helped me do a "mid-air refueling" and re-fill my bottle as we walked (no time to stop) from one of the spares I had on my pack.

The trail was a little shy of 6 miles.  Multiple people had GPS devices so we knew our exact time elapsed and distance covered.  We exited the trail at about 5.2 miles covered and 1:51 elapsed.  Personally I had to trot on the downhills and stride it out as much as I could on the flats and tiny uphill grades but with Tactical_Bacon hanging back with me for recording and motivation I hit the 6 mile mark with maybe 30 seconds to spare.  Thanks dude!

I snapped a few pics early on the trail before I was maxed out so bad I could barely think.

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Some segments of the trail were pretty tame like above.  Your typical state park hiking trail.



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Other parts were like above with steep (for Kansas) ups and downs.  Not anything with long climbs obviously but reasonably steep, hard ups and downs that had you watching to not bust your ass on the way down or (in my case) wondering if I'd make it to the top before my quads decided they were done.  The red line shows the fairly tame uphill on the other side of the little creek.



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Here are my boots and legs after we were done.  I don't think any of the muddy sections were up to my ankles but there were plenty of spots where we sank in a ways.


I was using Lowa Camino GTX boots which have proven to be worth every penny.  Incredible traction even on wet and muddy rocks, super ankle stability and already comfortable with only maybe 20 miles on them.

My wife was using Asolo boots (not sure on the model) and was equally happy with them.

All in all it was a great first APC hike but I think we'll choose something a smidge less rugged for the next one.  Everyone was in good shape and strong hikers.  Besides myself I'm not sure who all was carrying a qualifying weight but it was an extremely challenging course.  I really appreciate meeting a group of quality people IRL and putting faces to some screen names.

Go for it!

I'm going to the APC website to sign up now.  The wife wants a copy of the handbook ASAP!

Here's an unmarked copy of that hill pic.

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Is there a sign up form on the website I'm not seeing?  Not sure what kind of sign up you have to officially join or can't find it.

@lomshek it was my pleasure to bring up the rear with you, like I said on the trail you can take off the stripes but you really can’t, everyone finishes.

And kudos to you for shuffling the last half mile, nothing is better than winning and we hit the time hack.

I honestly was dreading the 8:45 round trip drive this morning when I woke up, but I’m so glad to have had a chance to meet you, the rest of the Kansas crew and the fellow border jumpers. I’m sure a three state event isn’t a big deal on the east coast but I thought it was pretty cool.

It was awesome meeting you and the others.  My 52 year old knees held up better than I thought they would on that trail.

Really appreciate the pacing and willingness to stay with me.  No way would I have known how close we were to the time limit or made it without your pacing.

Attached File


Here’s my Strava tracking app for the hike.

Strava isn’t the perfect app for this but it was close enough to get a good idea.  No I did not hit 18mph!  LOL

The time was off a little but the distance was about perfect.  I didn’t stop it until we got back to the cars instead of at the 6 mile mark.

Not sure how accurate the elevation reading is but it was a lot of up and down.  Maybe one of the GPS guys has a better record they can upload.

Next hike will maybe be on a little less challenging terrain that will be more beginner friendly.

That was a bit more technical than expected, but everyone was in GREAT shape and there was a real sense of accomplishment after we finished.  

As we all found out, Kansas is not ALL flat.  

Thank you to everyone who made it out and powered through, I have no doubt we will be able to power through much longer hikes in the future.

We are planning to have monthly events going forward and will be including technical skill workshops in the future prior to or after our hikes, including marksmanship, stop the bleed training, and even the dreaded Ham Radio that no one has been able to explain to us yet.

We will be targeting the end of February near the Kansas City Area and potentially having a stop the bleed course, however keep in mind this IS FLEXIBLE and we will make adjustments based on what draws the most interest.

IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO ATTEND IN THE FUTURE LET ME KNOW WHAT AREA YOU ARE IN AND I PROMISE YOU I WILL MAKE IT HAPPEN.

If you aren't sure if you want to pack the weight, come out and walk the trails with us.  Meet some great folks and learn some useful skills.

Special Thanks to

@Lomshek for his vast social network
@Tactical_Bacon for making the drive out and keeping us on pace
@HighPlains1911 for snacks
@woodxdm for his insight into other chapters and providing feedback on loadout
@The other one who's screen name I can't remember who put us all to shame

Added events #2 and #3.

Update 2/23

Added Event #4