The guys over at Vermont Overland didn’t pull too many punches on Day One of the 2014 Vermont Overland Trophy. Today’s route covered over 100 miles of road, 3 challenge trails, and passed by one angry local resident.
“Day one is meant to separate the prepared from the ill-prepared, the women from the girls, the wheat from the chaff, the tire from the rim.” – Peter Vollers
Peter briefing the teams on trail etiquette and conditions
Around 7:00 AM participants started to position their trucks to be the first ones out of the gate after the mandatory morning driver’s meeting. As soon as the meeting ended, drivers rushed to their rigs and headed straight for the trail.
The morning drivers meeting
Within 15 minutes of the start of Day 1, Team 1 suffered a catastrophic failure when their LX 470 had a front differential failure. News traveled quickly but all of the other teams continued on, albeit a little more cautiously.
Zimm’s LX 470 moments before his differential failure
Around lunch time, an angry resident decided to block one of the trails and prevent participants from completing one of the challenge trails. After some encouragement from the local law enforcement the trail was reopened and boy was it worth the wait.
The days toughest challenge trail
For the rest of the afternoon we tailed Team VAEV and finally made it to base camp 8 hours after starting our journey.
Team VAEV
Now we’re sitting by the bonfire sharing stories and pondering tomorrow’s trail conditions. As of right now, no other truck besides the LX470 has suffered major damage, and all teams are in high spirits. Although with an incoming storm front, we could have an opportunity to re-live last years brutal wet and sloppy conditions. Till tomorrow.
Would love to see a map that shows were they are at and the route there taking
Chris, we would love to let you know where we are, but we like to respect all the work put in by Peter and Vermont Overland. They’ve spent thousands of man hours clearing trail so out of courtesy we don’t share their routes. You can find the maps though through VTRANS as they are publicly available.
Great coverage Alex! Looks like an event I’ll have to try someday – looking forward to your next writeup, have fun and be safe!
Looks like a great event once again. Keep up the great coverage for us that are stuck someplace else.
Thanks John, today was pretty rough in terms of getting stuck, we’ll see what tomorrow brings.
You need to get up here Cody, you guys would have a great time.