Oregon Trophy Challenge
May 13-15, 2016
Tillamook State Forest, Oregon
May 13-15, 2016
Tillamook State Forest, Oregon
After two consecutive years of holding the first place trophy for the Oregon Trophy Challenge, Team 
was eager to register for this years event and try our hand at a third title. Some changes were made to the team this year as one of our previous drivers, Josh, had another event going on this weekend. That's where Dan enters the picture. We recruited Dan for his vast knowledge of all things botany, borderline superhero eyesight, compact size, and atypical taste in music. Welcome aboard, Dan!
Team this year would consist of myself and Dan in my Jeep, Nick and Scott in Nicks Jeep.
The event this year kind of snuck up on us (read, we procrastinated). Both of us had some upgrades and mods planned for the Jeeps, but in the end we just did a thorough race prep, packed the Jeeps, and drove them to the event on Friday. I was last to arrive, around 9:30PM, which put us last to check in and receive our instructions. It was going to be a long night...
While I set up camp, the rest of the team worked on plotting the coordinates, and developing a route. This would basically be like a geocache challenge all over TSF in the middle of the night. We set off for the first one at 11:00PM.
We received our direction packet, and set off on the route. Scott and Dan bounced upcoming turns off one another making for some good progress early on. We reached our first check point at Hogsback, where one vehicle had to drive down, and then reverse back up through a cone course. Nick handled this task. (pic credit to FB)
We continued on up and over 7-Up, and then onto Saddle-Up. While bombing through Dogleg a relatively easy trail I managed to clip a stump with the front driver tire. It was a hard hit that brought the Jeep to a near stop. I immediately noticed my steering wheel about 180 off... upon further inspection my steering box was now dumping fluid out the sector shaft seal. This was a hard blow to the team this early on, but there was no way we could finish the day with the box in the condition it was in.
While staring at the box hoping it would fix itself, Scott came up with an idea, "guys, we're not that far from camp, lets head back and swap boxes with the MJ (his daily driver)." Brilliant!
We had a title to defend, and weren't going to give up. Once back at camp we settled into a pit crew pace of box swapping.
While making repairs we sent Scott to Gales Creek to top off the gas cans as this might be our only time to do so. We had the new box installed and steering bleed by the time he returned.
We geared back up and headed back to where we left off. We lost a little over two hours with the repair by the time we got back on course.
What Dan actually photographed.
More checkpoints were completed. That's team work right there. (photo credit to FB)
"Optional Hill Climb," yes please.
The Nail Salon atop Mini Rubicon.
We finished up the first packet of directions, and set off on the second leg of this event knowing we still had a lot of ground to make up. However, we felt we'd been doing really well on the challenges at the check points, and that's what this event comes down to, points.
Made a quick lap on Waterfall for one of the top times for the day. (photo credit to FB)
Going on two hours of sleep, and twelve hours in the Jeep, spirits were still high.
We continued on course, made a stupid mistake at an "and again...". That cost us some time, but we regrouped as a team and made sense of it to continue on. Eventually we found ourselves heading up Rogers Road as fast as we could push the Jeeps. My rig was pinned at 3K rpm for 8 minutes chasing Nick up the trail. Once up top we then navigated a slalom course over some slick logs to the finish. We netted the top time at that event. Our station wagons got it done.
We tackled another punch card coordinate, and then had a quick team meeting on where to go from there. Our cutoff time was 9:08PM, and it was now 8:30PM. We could have pushed on (which I really wanted to), but felt we had to get our score card in before the cutoff as that's what ultimately mattered. We rallied down Fox Creek Road to Highway 6, and then bee lined it for Browns Camp. We pulled into the event site at 9:08PM on the dot. At this point all we could do was hope for the best as we knew we gave it 100%.
was eager to register for this years event and try our hand at a third title. Some changes were made to the team this year as one of our previous drivers, Josh, had another event going on this weekend. That's where Dan enters the picture. We recruited Dan for his vast knowledge of all things botany, borderline superhero eyesight, compact size, and atypical taste in music. Welcome aboard, Dan!Team
this year would consist of myself and Dan in my Jeep, Nick and Scott in Nicks Jeep.The event this year kind of snuck up on us (read, we procrastinated). Both of us had some upgrades and mods planned for the Jeeps, but in the end we just did a thorough race prep, packed the Jeeps, and drove them to the event on Friday. I was last to arrive, around 9:30PM, which put us last to check in and receive our instructions. It was going to be a long night...
While I set up camp, the rest of the team worked on plotting the coordinates, and developing a route. This would basically be like a geocache challenge all over TSF in the middle of the night. We set off for the first one at 11:00PM.
- 12:00AM we were hiking through the brush on a hill side while the sky lit up with lightning and thunder.
- 1:00AM with Nick's light bar lighting up the forest, we searched for another punch off the side of the trail
- 2:30AM burned up a lot of time scouring a dead end road for another punch, Dan's GPS tracks resembled an etch-a-sketch drawing
- 4:00AM knocked out a few more punches, and now found ourselves hiking up a hillside through the brush, falling into what seemed like bear dens, trying to pin point the exact location of the next coordinate
- 5:00AM returned to camp, few words were spoken, we all crashed in our tents preparing to head back out in two hours
We received our direction packet, and set off on the route. Scott and Dan bounced upcoming turns off one another making for some good progress early on. We reached our first check point at Hogsback, where one vehicle had to drive down, and then reverse back up through a cone course. Nick handled this task. (pic credit to FB)
We continued on up and over 7-Up, and then onto Saddle-Up. While bombing through Dogleg a relatively easy trail I managed to clip a stump with the front driver tire. It was a hard hit that brought the Jeep to a near stop. I immediately noticed my steering wheel about 180 off... upon further inspection my steering box was now dumping fluid out the sector shaft seal. This was a hard blow to the team this early on, but there was no way we could finish the day with the box in the condition it was in.
While staring at the box hoping it would fix itself, Scott came up with an idea, "guys, we're not that far from camp, lets head back and swap boxes with the MJ (his daily driver)." Brilliant!
We had a title to defend, and weren't going to give up. Once back at camp we settled into a pit crew pace of box swapping.
While making repairs we sent Scott to Gales Creek to top off the gas cans as this might be our only time to do so. We had the new box installed and steering bleed by the time he returned.
We geared back up and headed back to where we left off. We lost a little over two hours with the repair by the time we got back on course.
What Dan actually photographed.
More checkpoints were completed. That's team work right there. (photo credit to FB)
"Optional Hill Climb," yes please.
The Nail Salon atop Mini Rubicon.
We finished up the first packet of directions, and set off on the second leg of this event knowing we still had a lot of ground to make up. However, we felt we'd been doing really well on the challenges at the check points, and that's what this event comes down to, points.
Made a quick lap on Waterfall for one of the top times for the day. (photo credit to FB)
Going on two hours of sleep, and twelve hours in the Jeep, spirits were still high.
We continued on course, made a stupid mistake at an "and again...". That cost us some time, but we regrouped as a team and made sense of it to continue on. Eventually we found ourselves heading up Rogers Road as fast as we could push the Jeeps. My rig was pinned at 3K rpm for 8 minutes chasing Nick up the trail. Once up top we then navigated a slalom course over some slick logs to the finish. We netted the top time at that event. Our station wagons got it done.
We tackled another punch card coordinate, and then had a quick team meeting on where to go from there. Our cutoff time was 9:08PM, and it was now 8:30PM. We could have pushed on (which I really wanted to), but felt we had to get our score card in before the cutoff as that's what ultimately mattered. We rallied down Fox Creek Road to Highway 6, and then bee lined it for Browns Camp. We pulled into the event site at 9:08PM on the dot. At this point all we could do was hope for the best as we knew we gave it 100%.
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