![[US trials for Camel 96, CA Dec 1995, jpg]](PICs48/1995.UStrials.jpg)
US Trials for Camel96, Hollister Hills, CA, Dec 1995.
US Trials for Camel96, Hollister Hills, CA, Dec 1995.
Applying, US trials, US selections:
Date: Tue, 5 Sep 1995 23:04:21 -0500 From: rover@pinn.net (Alexander P. Grice) Subject: Camel Trophy '96OK gang, here's your chance to have a go at the Olympics of Four Wheel Drive, the 1996 Camel Trophy which will be returning to good ol' reliable Borneo. That event will take place next April in the southern half of the island - during the rainy season, of course. Here's your chance to apply for one of the US positions. The deadline for applications is October 15, so update that resume.
Women are encouraged to apply, and there will be 12 people invited to a non-stop 30 hour trial in northern California in December. Four will advance to the international selections in Spain, with two chosen in Spain to represent the US in April.
Applicants must be 21, hold a driver's liscence and never professionally raced. Send applications to:
Tom Collins
US Camel Trophy Coordinator
P.O. Box 587
Snowmass, CO 81654
Expect: tree-dwelling leeches, thigh deep mud, insects the size of diner
plates and three weeks of mind- and muscle-numbing exertion, but *all
expenses paid*. I hope your knees are up to it. Good luck.
A. P. (Sandy) Grice
Ten candidates have been selected for the US Camel Trophy trials, to be held at the Hollister Hills ORV area in California December 9-10. Over two days, the candidates will be asked to run a six-minute mile, build log bridges, repair a purposely-impaired Land Rover, prepare their own meals and generally survive a non-stop marathon of stress designed to push each to their limits.
Four finalists will advance to the international selection trials, where two will be chosen to compete in the 17th adventure in Borneo.
Needless to say, the candidates are a fit bunch. One was a Navy UDT, two are marathon runners and all have off-road vehicle skills, either in motorcycle endurance races or four wheeling. The candidates are:
Thomas Baynard,27, Chester Springs, PA
Jeffrey Brandner, 31, Chester, NJ
Kenneth Cameron, 26, Vail, CO
Stuart Dahlin, 35, Watertown, SD
Kevin Hines, 35, East Wareham, MA
Fred Hoess, 29, Stanhope, NJ
Jonah Houston, 29, Monterey, CA
James Lyaons, 30, Davis, CA
Gregory Oberst, 36, Seal Beach, CA
Mark Ritter, 33, Marietta, GA
Mark is a member of the Atlanta area Rover club.
- rover@pinn.net (Alexander P. Grice)
Since the major chomped the 12/13 digest, here's a repost of the results...
After thirty two hours of near non-stop exertion, the four finalists for the US Camel Trophy team were selected over the weekend at the Hollister Hills ORV area in northern California. The competitors will advance to the international trials in Seville, Spain, where two will be selected to represent the US in the next Camel Trophy in Kalimantan, Borneo.
The finalists are:
Jeff Brandner, 31, a landscape architect from Chester, New Jersey. Ken Cameron, 26, a carpenter from Vail, Colorado. Fred Hoess, 29, a mortocycle racer from Stanhope, New Jersey, Greg Oberst, 36, firefighter and paramedic from Seal Beach, California.
These four were chosen from the nine participants; there were 400 applications for the US team. Originally, ten were selected to compete, but Mark Ritter (who is on the LRO list) withdrew at the last moment. An airline pilot, he aggravated an old injury whilst rock climbing a week earlier, and after consulting with Tom Collins, the US team coordinator, he withdrew from the competition. (Sorry to hear about that, Mark.)
A. P. (Sandy) Grice [12/'95]
I attended the Camel Trophy National trials this weekend at the Hollister Hills Off Road Recreational Vehicle area in Northern California.
Four Americans will be traveling to Seville Spain in February 1996 for the International Selections. Two will go on to represent the U.S. in the 1996 Camel Trophy.
The "Final Four" are:
Jeffrey Brandner, 31, Chester, NJ - The owner of a landscape architecture and installation firm, he has off road driving experience in the Rocky Mountains as well as in Central America. He is a competitive motorcycle, kayak, and ski racer.
Kenneth Cameron, 26, Vail, CO - A carpenter for a log home construction company, he has modified vehicles for off-roading and is a volunteer for Vail Mountain Rescue. He has raced motorcycles, and is an advanced rescue scuba diver.
Fred Hoess, 29, Stanhope, NJ - The U.S. sales and marketing manager for Ducati motorcycles. He has off road driving experience pre running and maintaining motorcycle race courses. He has raced autos, motorcycles, jet skis, snowmobiles, and bicycles.
Gregory Oberst, 36, Seal Beach, CA - A professional firefighter and paramedic, he owns a Land Rover Discovery and has off road driving experience in Mexico. He has raced off road motorcycles and mountain bikes, and is a marathon runner.
I will be writing a full article on the event with photos for an upcoming issue of the Land Rover Owner Association (LROA) Aluminum Workhorse Magazine.
Kevin Kelly [12/'95]
The US Camel Trophy team was selected last Saturday after five gruelling days of competition in the Andalusian Hills outside Seville, Spain. The trials were particularly tough, as record winter rains had turned the hills into a sea of mud.
Ken Cameron, 26 from Eagle, Colorado and Fred Hoess, 29, Stanhope, New Jersey will have less than a month to get ready for the Trophy, which begins April 1 in Kalimantan, Borneo. Cameron and Hoess narrowlly edged out Jeff Brandner, 31 of Chester, NJ. Greg Oberst of Seal Beach, CA withdrew early in the week, as he could not bear to be parted from his newborn daughter.
Participating teams this year will include: Belgium, Canary Islands, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Holland, Italy, Japan, Morocco, Norway/Sweeden, Poland, Russia, South Africa, Switzerland, Turkey, the UK and the US. The special task award will be given to the team with the highest empirical score in those events, while the Team Spirit award is voted by the competitors. The Camel Trophy is given to the team with the highest overall score.
New this year is the Land Rover Trophy, given to the team that "demonstrates outstanding four-wheel drive skills based on proper technical expertise and attention to personal and vehicle safety." (Read: team that bashes up their Rover the least.)
[ ... ]
A. P. (Sandy) Grice, email: rover@pinn.net [4/3/96]
[...]
The 17th Camel Trophy event got under way April 1 with 20 hours of "special tasks" held near the start at Balikpapan, Indonesia. The finish line is 1,100 miles and 21 days west across the tropic heat and humidity of equitorial Borneo at Pontianak. There, the second set of special tasks will take place. In between, there will be nine major river crossings, two mountain ranges and the near constant rain of Borneo's wet season.
The first task was a navigational exercise; after being ferried across the Balikpapan estuary, the American team of Ken Cameron (26, a carpenter from Eagle, Colorado) and Fred Hoess (29, a motorcycle racer from Stanhope, New Jersey) finished the event with but 15 seconds to spare.
The next task divided the competitors into five teams of four nations each; the US was teamed with Germany, the Canary Islands and the Czech Republic. The goal was to transport four tires and four water-filled jerry cans across a very uninviting swamp. A closed-course driving exercise was next, followed by the task of getting a disabled vehicle across a lake on a raft. The twist: a vital raft part had first been dropped into the middle of the lake. The day's final task was a navigational exercise: find the evening's campsite - 60 km away. At the end of the first set of special tasks, two teams that have never done particularly well, Russia and Greece, were in first and second. Spain was in third. The US was in 18th place.
On April 3, Ken Cameron and Fred Hoess were up at 6 AM (after all of one hour's sleep). New this year is a reconaissance team. Though the general route of the event has been scouted and campsites identified, it is up to the recce teams of four nations each to choose the best route; that group will change each day. The US was teamed with Switzerland, Turkey and the UK and will have three other opportunities to be the vanguard.
Ken Cameron's professional skills as a log home builder were frequently called to use. Virtually every bridge required rebuilding, or at least repairs, before the 20 teams and 18 support vehicles could cross. Sometimes, several rounds of repairs were necessary.
Vehicle travel could best be described as "skating" as sideways motion was almost as frequent as forwards travel. The Polish team rolled their Disco onto its side, though there were no injuries and the vehicle was quickly righted.
The day's greatest challenge was the river crossing at Sungan Luang. Looking like something straight out of "Indiana Jones", the 30 meter bamboo bridge appeared to be sticks and twigs haphazardly lashed together with a few ropes and vines. Fred Hoess was the first driver to attempt the span and made it across without incident. The next vehicle, driven by the British, was not so fortunate. The left rear wheel broke through, and it was 45 minutes of frantic repairs before they could continue.
What fun!
April 6 - With only about two hour's sleep, the US team again found themselves in the recce unit, teamed up with South Africa, Greece, Russia and the Canary islands. The first major obstacle was a washed-out bridge that was beyond repair. Bypassing it by driving down into the river and winching up the other side, the recce team continued onward, while the remainder of the convoy remained behind until everyone could be winched across.
The scout group repaired several more bridges before arriving at Sungai Barito, a major river crossing and bridge of 30 meters. Unfortunately, the bridge had been destroyed less than a week earlier by floods. Though the team worked for several hours to get a vehicle across, it was deemed futile, and it was decided to detour 3 km upstream and call in the raft unit.
Meanwhile, back at the bridge bypass, things were going from bad to worse. A severe thunderstorm destroyed the vehicles' exit route from the river and mud flows were making the crossing almost impossible. Work will continue through the night to catch up with the lead units at the rafting point.
Date: Wed, 10 Apr 1996 18:03:22 -0500April 7 - Easter Sunday was a busy day, though no one moved far. The day was spent getting the remaining 31 vehicles across the bride bypass to catch up to the others at the ferry point at Muara Ja'an. There, a local barge that could hold three vehicles was hired to augment pontoon boats that can carry two.
April 8 - After moving only 6 km in two days, the 107 km traveled on Monday was made all that much longer by the treacherous red clay tracks. But the convoy is almost back on schedule. By 5:30, the convoy assembled on the bank at Sungai Kapuas to beging ferrying vehicles across to the other side where all would camp for the night.
Rover's web site is supposedly up and running now...I haven't checked it out but will do so as soon as I log off the mail server. It's: [here]
Reuters is making video feeds available for all who can snatch them off the
satelites. Dates, times and transponder info are as follows:
April 10, 12:30-12:45 PM EDT, Telstar 402R Channel 20
April 12, same time, same channel
April 15, same again
April 16, 12:30-12:45 PM EDT, Galaxy 4, Channel 5
April 18, 12:30-12:45 PM EDT, Telstar 402R, Channel 20
April 20, 12:30-12:45 PM EDT, Galaxy 4, Channel 7
April 22, 12:30-12:45 PM EDT, Telstar 402R, Channel 20
April 9 - This might have been called the day of the "accidental tourist" - it was rather a bad day all around. Early in the day, the US team was delayed over an hour draining a tank of bad fuel. Apparently the last ones to fill up out of a drum of diesel, they balanced the vehicle on two wheels using a pair of winches. (Don't these things have drain plugs?!?)
Later, participating journalist Ken Freund of Moorpark, CA was taking photos of the convoy crossing a washed-out section of track, when he stepped backwards and fell off the edge. Falling about 20 feet, the sustained a compound fracture of his nose (ouch!) and was airlisted out to Balikpapan. Later, he was flown to Singapore for surgery.
The US team must have been pretty upset by this, because they promptly got lost. Failing to follow proper convoy procedures and reading the GPS incorrectly, they drove 25 km out of their way before finding the group again. They had stopped at a particularly clean stream to bathe and do some laundry.
Later in the afternoon, while the convoy was parked on a particularly narrow section of the track, two young motorcyclists came speeding around a curve and crashed head-on into the parked Greek vehicle. Though none of the Camel Trophy team was injured, the locals sustained multiple broken bones each and were transported to a hospital.
*----"Jeep may be famous, LAND-ROVER is Legendary"----*
| A. P. (Sandy) Grice |
| Rover Owners' Association of Virginia |
| 1633 Melrose Parkway, Norfolk, VA 23508-1730 |
| E-mail: rover@pinn.net Phone: 804-622-7054 (Day) |
| 804-423-4898 (Evenings) FAX: 804-622-7056 |
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