I Like Long Walks In The Wilderness, Rocks In My Shoes & Dirt On Everything

Trevor Yale Ryan

As I’ve touched on in my previous coverage from the Oregon Trail Rally, I’ve long wanted to shoot an event like this. But at the same time, I knew it would be an incredible amount of work to pull it off properly.

Beyond the 18-hour day that would be required to shoot the event itself, another full day of recce would be necessary if I was going to go about it on my own. As such, I was happy for the opportunity to tag along with my friend Chris Daley for the day, rather than to drive aimlessly through the wilderness of the Pacific Northwest myself.

While I wanted to share a bit of what goes on behind the scenes as well as the various stunning landscapes we encountered on our journey, this didn’t quite fit into my standard coverage of the event. So, here we are…

Hour after hour was spent in the truck on Saturday, and each stage was completely different than (and miles apart from) the others. But before I dive into our adventures from the day it’s best I introduce the cast.

First up is Chris Daley in the #38 vest, who was shooting for the event itself and no less than a couple of dozen regional drivers. As such, there was no wiggle room in his itinerary for the day.

Then, there was another Trevor in the group — Trevor Stevens — in vest #18 and, finally, Curtis Zapar. While Curtis spent much of the day gazing majestically at the horizon, his role as ‘Swahili Translator’ worked wonders with the locals.

There’s plenty of standing around and waiting between stages to catch the cars on course, so having a decent group of guys to hang out with for the day goes a long, long way.

Another important aspect is actually having a vehicle that can travel the courses. Sure, these are public roads so any car can technically make it in good weather, but being able to climb off the trail at any point means you can find your way to a safe spot without having to hike out to it.

This might seem like a small thing, but over the course of the day I logged eight miles of wandering around and, frankly, it didn’t seem that I did all that much exploring by foot. It would have been at least twice this if we had to hike to our initial locations. […]

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