{"id":6178,"date":"2016-11-13T11:48:44","date_gmt":"2016-11-13T11:48:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/usnomadstudio.com\/usnomads\/blog\/?page_id=6178"},"modified":"2016-11-30T22:41:24","modified_gmt":"2016-11-30T22:41:24","slug":"notes-from-the-road-14-october-2016","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/usnomadstudio.com\/usnomads\/blog\/?page_id=6178","title":{"rendered":"Notes From the Road \u2014 14 October 2016"},"content":{"rendered":"
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NOTES FROM THE ROAD<\/h2>\n
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< more recent<\/a> | 14 October 2016 | older ><\/a> <\/p>\n

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Heading to Base Camp …<\/h5>\n


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Morning “Rally School” then off to “Base Camp One”…<\/strong><\/h6>\n


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14 October 2016:<\/strong> The day started out with a bit of chaos in the dark, as we prepared to leave for the location of the morning briefing. It was cold and raining outside. Rally officials told us to hold up, there was going to be a change of plans. Apparently there was a forest fire raging not far from the Valhalla location and the road was closed. It was just after six am, and as teams hunkered down over breakfast around town, the organizers scrambled to respond to the emergency. News reports were saying local residents were being evacuated. Well, at least it wasn’t snowing. It seemed our rally experience was going to be full of surprises. The organizers did an amazingly quick job of relocating the meeting site and even managed to bring in coffee and pastries for the whole group, as we gathered in the new location for the promised “rally school” briefing. Starting with a slide show and a preview of the maps (but still not giving us copies that we could actually read), Emily Miller and the Rebelle organization outlined some of the specifics that we had all been puzzling over for months. The maps would mostly be 1 to 100,000 and 1 to 50,000 scale, with a few 1 to 200,000 ones. And the gridlines would be printed on them (during training we often had to draw in our own!). With this news and a few more informational briefings we were handed “roadbooks” that would take us to our first Base Camp, and told to arrive between 3p and 5p. Then we were released. Looking at the “Road Book” which was a kind of turn by turn directional guide, we could see that our location would be not far beyond Fallon, Nevada, and in fact that was the last town we would hit where we could gas up before arriving…
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The Nevada Desert …<\/h5>\n


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Moving out into the desert …<\/strong><\/h6>\n


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14 October 2016:<\/strong> We left the shores of Lake Tahoe this morning, and headed down from the mighty Sierra Nevada mountains into the Nevada desert, traveling east north-east. There was a strange feeling of transition as we drove, seemingly through time, space, climate, terrain and even weather. The cold wet air became warmer and drier. The landscape harsher and more desolate. A familiar desert sprawled out endlessly under an open sky. The transition was temporal as well as technical as we also left behind the technological modern world of our daily lives to enter a surreal “separate” rally world, for a week of unplugging and isolation face-to-face with the desert’s challenges. Teams of women from all walks of life (and from across the united states and abroad) were coming together out here in a new kind of endeavor. There was excitement in the air as we peeled off miles of highway to reach Fallon, Nevada, the last town before turning off pavement and into adventure. 60 miles east of Reno on Highway 50, Fallon is surrounded by farms, ranches, and the desert beyond. Most famous as the location of the U.S. Navy\u2019s “Top Gun” school, Fallon traces its roots back to the California gold rush when waves of settlers migrated west along the “Emigrant Trail. Our “base camp” would be some where south east of here. Continuing east on Highway 50, we drove past the alkali flats across from the Sand Mountain recreation area, then turned south onto RTE 839 which runs along the Sand Springs Mountains until we turned off onto dirt at \u201cBase Camp One\u201d in the Gabbs Valley. Our base camp was located near an area known as the historic Rawhide Mining district, which contains a network of interlaced 4WD trails not far from the Sand Mountain Recreation area. The Rawhide Mining district got its start when Jim Swanson discovered gold in the vicinity on Christmas Day 1906. The ore he found was determined to be high grade, setting off a \u201cgold rush\u201d in the area. According to \u201cNevada Trails Western Region,\u201d the name Rawhide can be credited to Charles Holman, a rancher and prospector, who had relocated to the new mining camp after having been banned from prospecting around the nearby camp know and \u201cBuckskin\u201d. He suggested naming the new camp \u201cRawhide\u201d as a play on words, to mark his contempt for Buckskin. At its peak during 1907-08 the Rawhide was booming, with a population of between 7,000-10,000 and a sprawling town that contained more than 40 saloons (but only two churches). There is nothing left of Rawhide now, apart from the cemetery, and the area is characterized by the familiar treeless terrain typical of the Nevada high desert, sprinkled with sagebrush and rabbit brush. The wind picks up and the sky seems to \u201cdarken\u201d through a screen of fine sand. Sometimes a swirling wind even creates small dust funnel clouds…
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Anticipation En Route…<\/h5>\n


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Expectations and imagination …<\/strong><\/h6>\n


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14 October 2016:<\/strong> Though most of our day’s drive was on pavement today, it was in a sense the beginning of our rally and the day was all about enthusiasm and anticipation as we got closer to our first desert base camp. The rally organizers had given us a few “road book” sections that let us check the calibration of our odometer and our terratrip against “rally” measurements. These “calibrations” will tell us (and each team) by exactly how much our odometers and terratrips are “off” from the official distance measures. We will then have a co-efficient that we can use to determine a “precise” distance. We also have our first opportunity to practice a real “TSD” (time-speed-distance) segment. This morning we learned that we would have to be within a margin of error of five SECONDS in order to score any points for these sections of the rally. As we did the “practice” TSD, we began to realize how hard that would actually be. The 150-mile “transfer” to base camp seemed to pass quickly and we were excited to see the line of Rebelle flags at the entry to our first desert outpost. We made it in time for the 5pm deadline and finally received our first set of maps in the evening…
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RALLY UPDATE: RALLY SCHOOL AND DEPLOYMENT …<\/h5>\n


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The official update from Rebelle Rally HQ …<\/strong><\/h6>\n


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14 October 2016 Rebelle Rally official update<\/a>:<\/strong> Navigation rallies aren\u2019t easy. Once you put aside the difficulties of living out of your vehicle in the desert for a week, tackling technical off-road obstacles, and inevitable vehicle issues; you\u2019re still in the middle of nowhere with only a compass and a map. Despite a fire totaling almost 200-acres overtaking the forest nearby Valhalla Estate,\u00a0forcing us to relocate to a new\u00a0location only hours before rally school was scheduled to start,\u00a0things went off with only minimal delay. Which is important, because rally school ensures that everyone has a fair chance, at the same time, to understand the rules of the rally, the format and how things will be run. This isn\u2019t where you learn how to navigate\u2014that\u2019s something done by teams in the weeks prior to prepare. \u201cIt\u2019s important to make sure the rally isn\u2019t just challenging, but it\u2019s fair to all teams\u2014and above all, fun for everyone participating.\u201d Said Chrissie Beavis, Head Rally Judge. Scoring is an essential part of this rally, it\u2019s what decides who wins, who loses, and where people place in between. For example\u2014if a team arrives after a deadline, or is caught speeding\u2014points will be taken away from those they\u2019ve earned. The team with the most points at the end of the competition will win the Rebelle Rally in their class. For more information on how the course was developed, see the video below. (Photo: Rebelle Rally\/Nicole Dreon<\/a>)…

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