Oregon Trophy Challenge 2015
Tillamook State Forest, Oregon
June 6-7, 2015
This year's Oregon Trophy Challenge snuck up on us with an early June event date. Without a doubt though, Team 6, aka Team
was in for another year. After all, we had to defend our title as 2014 Oregon Trophy Challenge champions.

With the Jeep loaded for all possibilities, I left Vancouver after work Friday afternoon. Forecast was calling for 90 degree weather, it was going to be a hot dusty weekend for sure.

After getting to camp and getting settled in we took the rigs over to tech inspection, and check-in. That's when we received news we'd be shoving off from Little Browns at 3:24 AM. Applied some decals, and got satans blessing.

Discussed some strategy for a bit, and called it an early night hoping to get a few hours of sleep.

Half awake, but packed and ready for the day we piled in the Jeeps and headed to Little Browns. We were greeted by Gary Kipp, this year's event organizer, who handed us a sheet with a list of five trails needing completed within six hours.
- Upper Crushers: One rig must complete the trail
- Airplane Hill: Both rigs through filter, one up the obstacle
- Can Opener: One rig must complete the trail
- Waterfall: Both rigs must complete the trail
- Ample & Alluring: Both rigs must complete the trail
After reading the list I was in complete denial Gary would make us run pretty much the hardest trails in all of TSF right off the bat at 3AM. Surely there had to be a catch... nope. Expect the unexpected!
We rallied up to Crushers a bit more awake, and ready start wheeling. After a winter down for some extensive upgrades on my rig, it was selected to be the rig to run. I began crawling through the filter, and easing on up into the Upper Loop. The Jeep was climbing well, when all the sudden we heard a pop. Not loud, but evident something happened. After that I lost drive to the front passenger tire. I pulled the hub suspecting I had somehow broke it, but we found everything intact. Upon closer inspection though it had appeared I had installed the drive gear backwards a few days before during some maintenance, so it only had a sliver of engagement... oops.
With the hub fixed the Jeep was crawling along well again. We had time to make up (~10 minutes) so Nick went into spotter overdrive and had me rock bouncing through the rest of the loop. We finished strong, and now running on adrenaline we moved onto the next trail.
Josh coming through the Airplane Hill lower filter just before sunrise.

At the main obstacle mid way up the trail there was another check point. My rig was again elected to complete the obstacle. Josh and Nick gave me some eyes, and the Jeep crawled up the boulders pretty easily. Everything was working really well, and the team was in high spirits.
After I was free of the main obstacle we rallied up and out of the top filter just as the sun was beginning to rise.

From Airplane Hill we ran over the ridge, and down to Can Opener. This was the one trail I dreaded the most as it's matured into a monster obstacle over the years. We walked up to the ledges and tried to pick a line. Once again my rig was elected to run it. Josh spotted me through the lower filter, and I was on my way up to the obstacle. I crawled around for a bit, but knew it wasn't going to happen on it's own. Warn was called in, and rope was pulled. With some creative spotting, and some patience the Jeep slowly crawled it's way to the top of the trail. It was pretty brutal, but all in all I felt like it was a good run.
At this point we learned it was a bonus if the other rig completed the trail. We weighed our options, and decided to go for half the bonus points by getting Josh's rig up to the obstacle, and back down.
After getting Josh up and down, we peeled out and headed up to Ample & Alluring. This wasn't a tough trail by any means, but it's pretty narrow and climbs really quickly. By the time we rached the top, Scott and I were smelling a very hot floor. Little bit of smoke from some fresh paint, but nothing too bad. We got our score from Bubba who was still in his sleeping bag, and headed down to Waterfall to complete our last trail of the morning.
Both rigs needed to run Waterfall, so we agreed to do what we knew best, and that was the right side corner line. However, before we could get to the obstacle I had to be tugged out of the filter, and then needed to tug Josh through the filter. Something has changed with that thing! Once through we cruised up to the obstacle and both walked right up.

We BS'd with the check point guys for a bit (really good people out there this year), and headed back to Lyda for the finish. With a total of eight teams this year, the first trail each team had to run was mixed amongst the teams. Shortly after 7:00, we pulled into Lyda being the first team there. With two hours to kill until the next phase began Josh and Nick cruised back to Browns to pick up some spare gas.

Did a quick fuel dump topping off for the next portion. Josh is a docking specialist.

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