You’re in the midst of the California desert. The GPS in your SUV has been disabled. There’s a 200,000-meter scale map in your co-driver’s lap on which she’s plotted a location the scale of a pinhead with a tiny plastic ruler. You’ve each received a compass, however since you’re the motive force you might not even know use it. Discover that spot. Then do it 153-odd extra occasions extra precisely than 64 different groups over the span of every week.

What’s the Rebelle Rally precisely?

The Rebelle Rally is the longest map and compass off-road navigation rally in the USA. Every morning at 6AM you get a sheet of 20-30 latitude and longitude coordinates. You plot these factors on a map and spend the remainder of your day looking for them. They’re of various levels of problem. Like ski slopes, greens are the best, marked by an enormous inexperienced flag. These are necessary. Don’t acquire one and your day sucks. Blues are a bit tougher. They’re up a extra technical path on the height of a mountain or in a severely rutted dry riverbed and marked by both a small flag or a blue publish. These are non-compulsory. The Black checkpoints, additionally optional, are usually not marked. Attempt to determine the place they’re then click on the satellite tv for pc tracker every group will get to mark their location on the planet and be in your means. Every time your group of two click on that tracker on a checkpoint the sign travels up into the heavens and again down into the delicate scoring software program created by rally organizers. The group with essentially the most factors on the finish of the week wins. Sounds simple sufficient.

Who can compete?

The Rebelle Rally doesn’t require you be knowledgeable rally driver or co-driver to compete. Primary navigation and off-road driving expertise are all you have to join. Effectively, that and your entry price of about $14,500. You may drive a 4×4 truck or SUV or just the all-wheel drive crossover you are taking your children to ballet in if you’d like. You don’t want some overbuilt, jacked-to-the-heavens off-road bro-dozer. Although I’d suggest an aftermarket skid plate to guard your grocery getter’s underbelly. You’ll additionally want some moxie. A bravado that claims you are able to do one thing that terrifies you and isn’t like something you’ve completed earlier than.

Not like the Dakar this isn’t about gunning balls out throughout the Sahara. It’s not a slap a roll cage in a modded AWD sedan and fling the automobile throughout hill and dale. There are not any light-weight buggies with 37-inch tires making simple work of colossal sand dunes. You’re driving inventory or near inventory automobiles. They’re huge and heavy and require a driver’s exact throttle foot and masterful use of the transmission. The Rebelle Rally is about measured accuracy, and, like a depraved sangria, you don’t realize it’s pummeled you till it’s too late.

Oh, and it’s solely open to ladies. Sorry boys.

That’s to not say that each one opponents are novices. Not by a protracted shot. There are many groups vying for the W, and people are all seasoned veterans. They’ve proven up 4, 5, some unique Rebelles eight occasions now because the first contest happened in 2016. These ladies know play the sport they usually slay. They tempo each second of their day, losing no time. They run to checkpoints, don’t cease for something frivolous like consuming, and nail with pinpoint accuracy the handful of time, velocity, distance challenges price factors that may bolster a groups’ scores or plummet them beneath the highest ten in the event that they miss a few time controls. For ten hours plus a day these girls stay laser targeted on the duty of driving over 1600 miles on a few of California and Nevada’s most unforgiving terrain. Or, whereas bouncing over mentioned unforgiving terrain, they’ve received their head in a map making an attempt to see which mountain peak or saddle that wiggly line on their map may symbolize as in the event that they’re doing it from house. For those who’re a navigator, I hope you don’t will be apt for automobile illness.

For those who’re utterly inexperienced you’re out in the midst of nowhere, getting simply circled as a result of after a few hours all of it begins to look the identical. And all you’ve completed is a weekend coaching or two plotting some factors in your map. Perhaps you’ve solely taken your AWD crossover out into sand dunes just a few occasions. Otherwise you’re gunning for a high spot in opposition to groups who’ve scored 100-percent days and the place the margin of error seems like zero if you’d like a podium. Each eventualities make for a anxious, palm sweating state of affairs.

What occurs once you’re not competing?

You’re tenting. You make up and break down your camp every day (until you blessedly are two nights at a specific basecamp). Through the week you make your means from frosty mountain temperatures within the teenagers on the beginning line in Mammoth Mountain, California, a peaky ski resort a 5 hours drive from Los Angeles to the triple digit scorch of the biggest sand dunes in North America at Glamis, which skirt the California/Mexico border.

Rally director, Emily Miller, rattles a cowbell at 5am each morning rousing you from a number of the most fitful, frigid, uncomfortable sleep you’ve ever had. Delirious, you rush to the principle tent the place there awaits the one comforting factor you get all week, meals from a Michelin-starred chef, Drew Deckman. For those who’ve by no means had Michelin rated tater tots, I like to recommend them extremely.

Together with your adrenaline pumping you rush to your rig ensuring it begins and your tires haven’t sprung an surprising sluggish leak from the sharp rocks you drove over the day earlier than. Pray you don’t have a flat. Nobody will change it for you. And if there’s an even bigger downside, mechanics will work in your automobile for 2 hours with out penalties. After that you just’re docked factors. Break a tie-rod? I hope you introduced a spare as a result of there isn’t a Napa Auto Components shut, and you haven’t any chase automobile coming to your rescue.

Every day begins just like the one earlier than. By day three or 4, you’re sideways since you’re thoughts retains telling you that this lengthy weekend out with the gals must be winding down and also you get to move house to your husband or spouse, your children, your canine, your regular, and extra importantly your cozy mattress. Sorry, you’re not even midway completed. You begin questioning if this could be all there ever has been and can ever be. You’ve additionally received a helmet in your head all day. All day. For ten or eleven hours a day. Like a brand new pair of cheap footwear, I hope you bought used to that at house.

And if you happen to don’t choose that particular person beside you effectively, you’re in for a world of damage as a result of the strain cooker that your automobile’s cabin turns into over the course of what’s seemingly a one bathe week has the potential to turn into essentially the most treacherous terrain of all. Work out a protected phrase and no matter snack calms your teammate down. You have to them each as a result of, keep in mind, they’ve turned off and taped up your cellphone for the entire seven days. Calls to your therapist are verboten.

What do you get if you happen to win?

For those who handle to do all that whereas preserving your sanity, you’ll end. Your first day trip you received’t win. Even if you happen to do all you get in your bother is a killer trophy and the possibility to do all of it once more as a result of that’s high prize, subsequent 12 months’s entry price waived.

However win or lose, what you do come house with, along with the half pound of sand in your tent and the worst smelling soiled laundry ever, is a way that possibly, simply possibly, something is feasible. Since you simply crossed the end line of the Rebelle, one of many hardest off-road rallies on this planet. And also you didn’t must be a professional to do it.