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2006 Nevada Trophy Rally

Nevada Trophy Rally

A good friend of mine works for ARB. Its a company I have been associated with for many years and when asked to guest drive or Navigate for them I never turn them down. Recently, my buddy called me and asked if I wanted to navigate for ARB in the 2006 Nevada Trophy Rally. I could not pass this up.

We Left Seattle on a Wed to make Tech inspection on Thursday in Lovelock. The drive took about 14hrs and we hit snow the entire way. We were exhausted. But once we got to Lovelock we were excited once again. Normally, you don't think of the desert as a beautiful place but I was truely struck by it. Its not a place I would want to live but visiting and seeing it from way off the freeway was well worth it.

When we got to Lovelock we met the organizer of the event and over beers he explained in detail how the race works. It goes like this:

There are over 120 gps waypoints located in the desert. Each waypoint is worth a certain amount of points based on the difficulty to get to it. Each day you have 15hrs to get as many waypoints as possible. In addition there are special closed course events that he has set up in the desert that are worth additional points. The kicker....there isn't enough time to get them all. So you must plan a route to get as many as possible and still get back to the finish line before your designated return time. Each minute you are late means a 200pt fine. After an hour it jumps to 1000pts. We are paired up with another truck for safety and as a team we work together to get each point. We cannot seperate.
The waypoints are given out in logbooks each night before bedtime.

DAY1
We leave Fernley at 6:00am. We travel about 20miles up a salt lake bed to the north end of the lake. From there we begin grabbing as many points as possible. Since its a little crowded with everyone trying to grab the first few points we decide to skip a few and get a head start on the rest. The move pays off and we are grabbing tons of waypoints before anyone else. We are right behind last years winner and we know we are doing good. At one point we had the runner pegged at 95mph across the desert! At around noon we make a fatal decision to take a shortcut through a ravine. We end up getting stuck for almost 5hrs and lose a lot of time. At the end of day 1 we are in 9th place. The only thing that lifted our spirits was the cow poop throwing contest which was worth 500pts at the finish line.

DAY2
They start the race a little later than the previous day because many people did not get back to their hotel rooms until 2am! We decide on a different strategy today. Since we have two of the more capable vehicles in the event we decided to go for some of the more difficult waypoints. This started with a set of points in a ravine worth about 1400pts. Going down was now problem but coming back up was too muddy and we had to winch ourselves back out. It was still worth it because no one else tried to get these. At about 10am we are going about 60mph in the desert. I am watching the laptop to navigate to our next point when all of a sudden the truck goes airborne and sideways. I brace myself for rollover. Somehow Seth saves it. At freeway speeds we hit a rock a little over knee high. The damage....one blown tire. We quickly change it and move on. I change my underwear.:(

At about 7pm we are feeling good. We have made up a lot of ground from the previous day and we are hitting a stretch of points we doubted many other people could get to. We plan our route to grab a few distant way points then head back to the hotel where the finish line is. At 10pm we are going almost 80mph. The 4runner has 2HD spotlights, 2floods, highbeams and another set of floods on the bumper. Its almost like driving in daylight but the animals are suicidal. I can't count how many jack rabbits and foxs we must have slaughtered on the trail.

We reach the hotel at 10:58...4minutes before our finish time. We submit our log book and call it a night. Most of us hadn't slept more than a couple hours of sleep in the last 3 days.

RESULTS
4th place!! Not bad considering the setbacks on the first day. This was one of the coolest events I have been to in years and I will definately go back next year. I like the fact that while driving is important its not the most critical factor. You must have a good navigator and you must plan well. It isn't even important that you have the most jacked up rig. There were a few stock dodge pickups that entered and didn't do horribly bad. They stuck to the easier ones and just had to get more of them to compete.

Ok on to the pics.

on board video...music is kinda ghey but funny.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...25525251049903

nice pics. I like wheeling in the desert....warm during the day(most of the time) and nice and cold at night.

Mike, that is sooooo COOL!!! Man I'd love to try this :) So part of the adventure was going on foot to actually locate the waypoints? or were the waypoints very visible for the most part from your vehicle?

Do you have more details on the event? (website etc) I'd like to look into this adventure. (something different!)

Awesome pix!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Good Times (Post 50372602)

So the way it works is that each waypoint is given a point value based on the difficulty finding it. A 300pt waypoint can usually be seen by stepping a couple feet off the trail while a 1000pt one may require climbing a large hill and search sage brush. Or in some cases when you finally get to it...it will be GPS coordinates to another waypoint. At paticular place they did this to us 3 times!!! Sometimes its not finding it thats difficult but getting to it. There were some difficult trails that unlocked vehicles would not make it through do to off camber washouts that leave 2 tires in the air.

The terrain was so varried it made the trip a lot of fun. We were in snow, mud, dessert, salt flats, high mt vistas, and wide open flat terrain all in 1 day!

This has been one of my favorite events and I will definately go next year. We should see if we can get a few people to go down as a group!

Here are details from this year.
http://www.offroadexperience.com/nvtr06news.htm

To give you an idea here are images of the waypoints from my laptop.

Makes for a busy day!!
DAY1
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6...ay1_points.jpg

DAY2
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6...ay2_points.jpg

Thats great! Sounds like a blast!!

man I am sooooo sold!! We definitely need to get a few yotatech groups on this event. :) I've got this penciled in for 2007!!

wow! what fun you had...jealous. i would love an adventure like that...someday!

I know every road in that area. I grew up and wheeled there a dozen or so years.

I am leaving friday for black rock springs (just north of Rd 49 between sulfur and gerlach) spending new year's in the springs.

Those pics are awesome, but you guys just scratched the surface, go north and east you will see stuff you would never expect in the desert.

That Dry lake next to pyramid lake was once filled with water and was called Lake winnemucca, The army corps of engineers drained it in the 40's. There used to be a dock on the western edge where ore was ferried accross to be picked up by truck on highway 447.

As late as 1950 there were groups of Paiutes living around the area via subsistance, my friends dad can recall his father trading bread and color magazines for venison.

You guys are lucky it has been a "dry" year up there, it can get really nasty when the ground is saturated.

sweet pics, i like the rigs, i almost bought a land rover like that one, but got a runner instead. looked like a good day of wheelin.

nice pictures that looks really cool!!!!! and i love the rigs. thats a bad 4runner and a really cool rover!!

It must have been a blast... the guy who sits across from me here in CO did it (in his Lexus a.k.a. new L.C.) and can't quit talking about it... he tried to get me to go, and like a dope I decided to work instead. The only down side is my 4Runner is TOO modified to enter... check the rules.

Very cool! Congrats on your 4th place, that is doing really good for a debut at the event. The ARB 4Runner is a perfect vehicle for that. How much extra fuel did you guys have to use?

I did it in 2005 with Expeditions West and it was really fun.

We brought 10 gallons of extra fuel. The first day we spent most of the time stuck in a ravine and didn't use much fuel. The second day we used every last drop. The rover got a little better mileage but he didn't have his foot in it as much as we did. Apparently our driver thought he was Ivan Stewart.

I think we have decided to run the expeditions west rally this fall. I am not sure which vehicle ARB will bring but I am hoping its the FJ or the Taco.

Quote:

Originally Posted by engxnerd (Post 50384248)

If you want to do it next year you should call Mike who runs it. I doubt he would have any problems letting you run. I don't see that you would have much of an advantage with the modified vehicle. There were several heavily modified FJ 40s and hummers and it didn't seem to help them! Its all about navigation and planning. As long as its street legal I think you can run.