My son, Leo, and I made our way down to Central Washington on Friday, October 11th to meet up with some of our long time Land Rover friends and participate in the Annual Northwest Challenge. This Land Rover only event was partially inspired by the Legendary Camel Trophy event and includes challenging off-road driving and special tasks with a mildly competitive edge.
This year each team consisted of one truck, driver and co-driver who would be scored based on their individual success. We had a really good turnout with 11 teams lined up to leave camp around 7pm for the Friday night run.
For the first stage, we were sent out on the trails in the dark, with a map and a few “navigational” GPS waypoints. We were tasked with finding orienteering flags placed randomly along the trails, no GPS way points for the flags this time, I guess that’s too easy! After a couple hours, we reached the top of the mountain and our first special task, where we had to tell the marshal how wide to put two folding chairs from 20 feet away (in the dark) and then drive through them without touching them. The tighter the gap the more points we got. We completed the fun course, found all five flags and head back to camp just after 11pm.
On Saturday morning, we got an early start with a 7:30am drivers meeting where we were paired up with another team to work through all the challenges together for the day. Leo and I were paired up with Doug and Mark. Doug is a long time NWC veteran so I was pretty stoked to get to work together with him and his teammate for the day. We were given a few sheets with details about our course and GPS waypoints for the day. There were nine trails to run and two specials task areas we had to get to at specific times during the day. The only other time limit was that we had to be back at camp by 6:30pm or there would be significant point deductions.
We agreed to start with the harder trails first and make our way toward the mornings special task area. The trails, still dry and dusty thankfully, were very steep in some places and narrow in others. We arrived at the special task area and the first task was a Land Rover trivia quiz. That was hard, we rely on the internet for so many things we used to bother to remember these days. Then we had to drive both trucks through a course attached by a tow strap without letting the strap touch the ground. Once that was done we headed off to tackle the rest of the trails while making our way towards the afternoon special task area. There was one trail that had two steep rocky climb sections and the instructions noted that we could be awarded additional bonus points if we ran the trail backwards up these steep sections. Once we had driven down to the bottom we took a break and discussed whether we were going to drive back up it. In the end we decided to go for it and despite the two climb sections. In the end, the worst part was the dust.
Next, we arrived at the afternoon special task area. The first task was a parts identification type quiz. They had laid out some of the weirdest and oddball old Land Rover parts each with a number and we had to write down what each part was with as much detail as possible within a 10 minute time limit. Around the corner was part two of the afternoon special task where the driver was blindfolded and the co-driver had to give instructions to the driver who had to parallel park the truck between two cones. That was fun!!
We still had five trails we hadn't run and time was getting on. We headed for the next trail and at one point we ran into an another team heading the opposite direction. No problem: drive off the trail and let them squeeze by. At a point marked by a GPS point we were instructed to take a picture with our vehicles and our team at the feature on the trail. We passed it then I realized we were missing the feature, so we backed up to a spot where the trail went between two large trees and we took photos again.
At this point I noticed the temperature gauge was reading hot and I had a bit of a panic because we had been monitoring a small coolant leak. I jumped out to inspect, back in to pop the hood, lift the hood expecting to see a big leak... and nothing! What? Oh no, what's going on... after checking around and seeing the coolant level was fine, I suddenly got a sense that something was missing... wait... it was too quiet, why isn't the cooling fan on? Damn, the electric fan had stopped. We traced the wiring, checked fuses and figured out that the thermostat was not functioning. Meanwhile the truck was parked between the two trees and another team arrived behind us! Thankfully, we managed to hot wire the fan and the temperature immediately returned to normal. Game on, lets go!
We cruised through the last few trails finding more flags along the way and keeping an eye on the time. Unfortunately, we weren't going to have time to go back and run the last trail that we missed, but we had an extra 30 minutes to drive into the little town of Liberty to read the information signs and answer another page of questions. We arrived back in camp at 6:27pm, just in time and handed in our score sheets. The rest of the evening was for Social time and the organizers prepared a dinner, snacks and cake for everyone. Everyone had a great time telling stories around the campfire about the day's adventures.
On Sunday, we got to sleep in a little and we had our drivers meeting at 8:30am. The whole group convoyed up to a site where the organizers had set up a traditional Land Rover trials style event course. There were 12 gates placed along a course with uphill, sidehill and downhill sections that challenged driver skill, while not hitting any gates and maintaining continuous forward movement. This event is extra fun because everyone gets to watch and cheer you on! Once everyone had run the course in each direction we all headed back to camp to pack up our gear while the organizers and volunteers tabulated all the results.
By noon, the entire group was called together for the results and awards. We all thanked the organizers, participants and event sponsors and then came the time for the announcement the winners. We knew we had done well without any major blunders but it was still a surprise that we were awarded first place. YAY!! Our friends, Doug and Mark from Saturday also did well and came in third place!
In the end, it's not about winning, but having fun doing Land Rover things with a bunch of great Land Rover people. I hope to see you all next year in Oregon!
-Don MacDonald