The HST meetups have all been to difficult to reach multi day to remote off trail locations with loose minimal organized structure beyond a tentative meeting locale. Thus those attending often start, meet, and leave on different dates using different trailheads. The result is partial meet ups and or some missing the others, with not a lot of actual time together. There really hasn't been planned pre-trip activities beyond getting to a destination and then everyone does their own thing whether that be peakbagging, exploring, loafing, or fishing. In a sense those meetups are more like some peakbagging challenge than a social gathering. And tends to attract attendies that are more into ultralight backpacking and racking up lots of miles.
Those attending have not complained and are apparently content as that runs. Not at all surprising considering the difficulty of reaching targets, the logistics of most traveling hundreds of miles to trailheads, everyones complex personal lives including usual career time off issues, and the diverse interests of mountain activities of those attending. In any case the notion of that kind of get together does not hold much interest to this person.
I would be interested in attending something short like a weekend, where people are more synced to start at a trailhead, to an easy to drive to then easy to hike to destination where there can be interesting things to do, and not in prime backpacking season but rather early season that could also work as a warm up trip, and to a destination that won't be crimped by wilderness permit quota issues. Heck I'd be fine leading some as a Friday evening night hike in.
http://www.davidsenesac.comEdited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02/24/2016 04:11PM by DavidSenesac.