This years Apex Extreme was set in one of the most remote parts of the North York Moors.  The Langdale Forest provided our home for our team ("Surrounded By Idiots 2" - Consisting of Tom Hague, Sam Brooke, Luke Wood and Sam Holden). The Apex Challenge is one of the toughest Explorer/Network challenges in the country. The aim of the weekend is to collect as many points as possible by finding bases or completing a scenario/ activities.
After arriving, pitching the tent the weekend kicked off with the "Apex Intense". The objective was to find bases within the woods to collect points, and bank as many points as possible back at the event centre without been caught by a ‘Catcher’ and having your points wiped. After a not so good start we picked up and managing to bank 100 points.
After a quick breakfast on the Saturday morning we were one of the first teams to leave the centre in to the forest. In the 7 hours given we navigated and collected points from bases, including saving endangered ducks from sharks (!) to crawling though streams and climbing through tree tops, to give us a score of 770 points. After returning and having tea we entered the "Glow company Grab" to attempt and boost our points. But sadly hitting glow sticks over a marquee using a tennis racket to then be caught on the other side in fishing nets, was too much for us gaining no extra points.
The Sunday was a mind boggling day from searching for "Incongruous Items" to navigating the "Apex accumulator" to match a colour code. Every stage closer to the code we matched it our points doubled giving us another 420 points from the morning. But it didn't stop there, as we were hit by an assault course run by no less than the British army. With us being the last team to take part in the assault course we ended up racing the Army themselves. We didn't stand much of a chance but we put up a fight and won an extra 248 points.
Almost unable to walk we finishing happily in 8th place out of 64 other Explorer teams, with a grand total of 1598 points. A full report of our results can be found at: http://www.apexchallenge.co.uk/pastevents/oct2008/results/summarypagee012.htm

 Report by Tom Hague.

Apex Challenge Report

Congratulations to the team from High Green Explorers who came 8^th out of 64 teams in the Apex Challenge.

The team – Surrounded by Idiots 2 - consisted of Tom H, Sam B, Sam H and Luke W.

A full report will follow when they've recovered enough!

The task:

As a team, and using public transport and your feet only, you have to visit as many places as possible on the list we’ll give you, gaining points for each site visited. The further away a site is, and the more awkward it is to visit via public transport, the more points it’s worth… and there’s cash prizes for the winning team!

You’ll need to take a photo of yourselves (with your team name card) whilst you are there to prove you’ve arrived!

We’ll be starting off from Chapeltown, as this has excellent public transport facilities. You’ll have 10 hours to visit as many places as possible and then finish at Grenoside HQ, where we’ll be staying the night, leaving after breakfast on Sunday. There will be a cash prize for each member of the winning team!

How much will it cost?

That depends on you! The only thing we’ll provide will be breakfast and drinks, so the basic cost is £2.00. We’ll have a take-away on Saturday night, so you can decide what you want to eat (Chinese, Indian, Pizza etc) and pay for it yourself. You must also work out how much your fares will be and the cheapest way of paying for them – for some of you this may be by buying a ‘South Yorkshire Day Tripper’ ticket (£5.00, buy it from the driver or conductor), for others it may be cheaper to use your ‘MegaTravel Pass’ (40p for each bus or tram fare, half price on rail fare).

So the cost will be around £12 for the whole event.

Forms, info etc can be downloaded from here:

http://cid-146108976f302264.skydrive.live.com/browse.aspx/Camps%20+%20Events/2008%20Camps/Explorer-ation

What a weekend! Really cold Friday night, then a bit of rain on Saturday…

Good job the Royston Building was available!

Highlights included the Scouts making the next best thing to a wooden hut to eat in (!), Frankie (who else?) getting wet at the canoeing lake, some fool of a Leader also getting pushed in (thanks Fuzzy), Sea Bass and Beer-Can Chicken to eat, hopefully two new Leaders (welcome Simon and Lucy), Cubs camping out whilst the Scouts and Explorers slunk off to the building, managing to build a bridge that stayed up and supported everyone and building rafts that nearly kept the right way up!

Congratulation to first time campers Alice, Adam and Chris from the Explorers, Sean from the Scouts and Alex S, Alex B, Liam, Josh, Frazer and Adam from the Cubs. As you managed to survive the weather on Saturday night you know that you can survive anything.

There are some photos below.