Updates for Night Ops: Camp Aiken 2026

Improved Email Communications

You may have already received an email with these updates from our typical Gmail account. However, to hopefully help with the massive amount of email communication that goes on, we’ve created a Campaign Monitor account to manage most of our email sends as well as a new email address – team@nightopsadventures.com. 

If you/your kids are no longer involved in Trail Life or AHG and/or you no longer wish to receive emails about it, please unsubscribe from the list. (It’s one of the reasons I made it – so I don’t accidentally add people to an email blast.) 

Porta-Johns Only

Porta-johns will be the only bathrooms available this year; we are doubling the number. We have decided to NOT use the GYM in any capacity this year… including the bathrooms. We will have access to the Gym for emergencies but that’s it. No flushies. No showers. No hanging out in the AC and playing games.

Event Dates/Time

These are the dates for the three Night Ops events:

The two AHG Night Ops events will happen in the same weekend – Friday night, then Saturday night. This is to reduce the burden on the AHG volunteers running the event and to test the dual weekend event format.

  • The first group of troops will come in on Friday, do the Friday night event, and leave Saturday afternoon after the awards ceremony (or stay and help run some part of the Saturday night event).
  • The second group of troops will arrive Saturday afternoon, do the Saturday night event, and leave after the Sunday award ceremony.

If you have any questions about this, let me know.

Event Start Times & Event Length Set

In order to respect our volunteers’ time, we have predetermined when we will start and end each event.  We have grace for late arrivals BUT we won’t be holding back the event for them.

For example, if the Trail Life event starts at 10pm and ends at 3am (5 hours); if your patrol arrives late and doesn’t have their maps checked-off until 10:30pm, they have 4.5 hours to complete the event (their time for the speed award still starts at map-check-off though).

Currently these are our targets:

  • Trail Life Weekend: Arrive by 7-8pm so we can start by 9pm and be done by 2am.
  • AHG Weekend – Friday: Arrive by 7pm so we can start by 8pm and be done by 1am
  • AHG Weekend – Saturday: Arrive by 6pm so we can start by 7pm and be done by 12/midnight.

Point of order: These are TARGET start times not deadlines; we will need the majority of everyone to arrive because this is a volunteer run event. So this is more about everyone having an solid idea of the ideal timing of the event and working together to arrive as soon as reasonably possible.

Other updates

Steve Update: As some of you may know, Mr. Steve had a stroke in January. God has been exceptionally good to us, and Mr. Steve is just about recovered. He’ll be at Night Ops this year, but will (hopefully) be taking it a bit easier.

While the Nafziger family has been highly involved in organizing this event every year, we are grateful to the many volunteers who have and are stepping up to help run and eventually take over the running of Night Ops: Camp Aiken. 

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