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The competition this year will be held at Landcruiser mountain park QLD on a specially constructed area in a large gorge below a dam; this will make it very good for spectators on the Saturday’s night competition with the area under lights.
Sundays “vertical assault” is also held in the gorge and the 3 Saturday stages will be held in natural terrain a short distance away from the gorge.

For this comp I still only have the Nissan limited slip in the rear but have a set of 35x10.5x15 centipedes on JT beadlocks to keep them clear of the chassis rails and a set of marks crawler gears in the transfer case.

SATURDAY

Track 3:
Before we had gotten to the start of the track we had snatched 2 vehicles out of the mud on the access track, we snatched another one out when we left to head over to track 2, just shows how difficult the comp was going to be.

Track 3 had a steep entrance into a narrow creekbed and then a sharp right turn up the creek with a small pool and waterfall, then a rocky outcrop straight after before opening up a bit near another rocky outcrop and finally a sharp right turn up the bank.
Strategically placed witches hats made sure we didn’t take the easy lines !!

Rain had the creekbed flowing and the steep black soil entrance meant that the truck went down faster than the wheels were turning and a big footfull of load pedal gained enough control to turn the corner into the creekbed, a large and slippery log beside a deep boghole almost stopped us but the centipedes gripped and kept us moving.

We dropped into the small pool but had to have a second go to get up the waterfall, then we entered the off camber rocks but as they were slippery and the rock hanging out of the bank was lined up for the door, I decided to drive the right hand tyre up and over the rock, almost worked but it slipped off, luckily the cab was past the rock and it only slammed the tray.
With a load scraping noise we cleared the rock and dodged the next outcrop and stopped at the bonus line, with revs built up we launched up and over the bank.

We didn’t get our scores but it would have been average.

We lined up for track two but another storm hit and as it was getting late they called it a night.


Saturday night
The competition course was cancelled due to the gorge being made of clay and the amount of rain falling but a few people went in and played to give the spectators something to watch, lots of mud flying and one Suzuki that decide it wanted to lay down kept the crowd amused despite the rain.

Unfortunately for the spectators that had left the “trakka terrace” campsite before the heaviest rain, when they tried to go back to camp they found two of the creeks deeply flooded and they could not drive back to camp, some of the spectators didn’t even manage to leave camp to get over to the competition area in the first place but the creeks were well down next morning.


Sunday

Track 2:
This track was set out in a wide gully and started off at a bad side angle then the track went over a rocky patch, through a mudhole, squeezed between some large rocks then turned up beside a tree while climbing a rock ledge then looping round and crossing the gully into a depression with a long rock ledge to get over.
Next was a deep hole beside a large rock then a small waterfall and lastly a hillclimb up and out of the gully.

We dropped over the rocks into the creekbed at the start and dragged our way over the rocky patch then rode the bank to keep out of the deepest part of the mudhole, we almost didn’t make it and I was relieved when it gained traction and started moving again.

Instead of trying to fit between the rocks, Chris guided me over one of the rocks and we scraped a bit but cleared them and made the turn up beside the tree and over the rock ledge.

Next we crossed the gully and turned hard left to try and climb the rock ledge out of the depression but the mud just made us slide along the ledge and after a few tries we ended up high centred on a large rock, we decided that we would have to winch off for a DNF as there was sparks coming off my tailshaft.

When we tried to winch off my cable broke so the officials did a double line pull and dragged us off the rock.

We lined up for the bonus hillclimb but didn’t make the climb up beside the rock.

Because we Did Not Finish the track we had the score of the competitor who finished with the highest score added to ours, we didn’t receive our score but it would have been pretty bad.


Track 1:
This track involved an angled drop from the top of the bank to a sharp right turn into a very muddy and rock filled gorge then followed up by some large boulders on a right hand turn back up the bank.
The mini gorge claimed about half the field and the boulder bend claimed a few as well.

We dropped down into the mini gorge with no problems but then the fun began, Chris was working pretty hard while I sat in airconditioned comfort and after several tries the officials told us this would be our last try .
With the turbo on boost and revs building I launched the truck at the ledges on the right and it went part way up then with the front wheels spinning madly just over the top of the ledge I turned left and the truck slid sideways around the rim and clawed its way out on the left…just!!

Next up we aimed the truck at boulder bend and got quite a shock when we drove straight round and out the exit.

Once again we don’t know our score but it would have been average.


Vertical assault:
This is not part of the scoring and is a voluntary thing; it involves trying to drive increasingly harder and harder climbs.
We made the first one but failed on the second one.

Our score for the weekend was 710 points which earned us 10th place and once again we had a great time despite the bad weather.

Shane Gerrish (AKA Big Red)

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