Overland Journal :: Summer 2009 by Overland Journal

Overland Journal Summer 2009

CONTENTS

Summer 2009

Feature s 32

Angola: Red Tape, White Knuckles, and Brown Mud, part two, Lois Pryce

Recovery Kit Test, Scott Brady

High Tea with the I.T.B.P: Journey into the Himalayas, Isaac Taylor and Jennifer Coogan

Best of Breed: Folding Knives, Jonathan Hanson

Edge Pro Apex Sharpening System, Jonathan Hanson

Algeria Solo: Adventure in an unproven vehicle, part one, Tom Sheppard

Vehicle Feature: Tom Sheppard’s Mercedes Benz G-Wagen, Tom Sheppard

The Trans-America Trail by motorcycle, Scott Brady

100

Long-Term Field Test Updates, Jonathan Hanson and Andrew Moore

Dep artments

Overland Post

Editor’s Column

Editor’s Project

News from the Trade

Overland News

Expedition Reads

Latitude

107

Overland Conservation, Roseann Hanson

108

Overland Medicine: Third-Degree Burns, Dr. Edward Beggy

113

Skills: Assembling an LPG Cooking and Lighting Kit, Jonathan Hanson

120

Overland Chef: Preparing Quality Meats, Roseann Hanson

122

Classic Kit: The Woodman’s Pal, Christophe Noel

128

Tail Lamp: Recovery Techniques in Three Points, Jonathan Hanson

On the cover: It doesn't even have a name—just part of the profusion of wild pristine landscapes scattered round Algeria's mid-Sahara. Photo by Tom Sheppard. This photo: A shepherd south of Gamshali village strikes a debonnaire pose with his flock. Photo by Isaac Taylor. Overland Journal Summer 2009 Back cover: Trans-America Trail, Nevada. Photo by Brian DeArmon.

Overland Journal Summer 2009

EQUIPT

For the road less traveled

Overland Journal Summer 2009

Summer 2009 Publisher Scott Brady Executive Editor Jonathan Hanson Editorial Director Chris Marzonie Senior Editor, Africa Graham Jackson Senior Editor, At-Large Douglas Hackney Conservation Editor Roseann Hanson Medical Editor Dr. Edward Beggy Contributing Editors Stephen Bodio, Tom Collins, Brian DeArmon, Bob Hazel, Adam Jeske, Christine Jeske, Lois Pryce, Andrew Moore, Kevin Rowland, Chris Scott, Tom Sheppard Director of Design Stephanie Brady Senior Photographer, South America Jorge Valdes Photographer At-Large Sinuhe Xavier Director of Advertising Brian McVickers Director of Operations Jeremy Edgar Contact Overland Journal LLC P.O. Box 1150 Prescott, AZ 86302 service@overlandjournal.com editor@overlandjournal.com Overland Journal is a trademark of Overland Journal LLC. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited. www.overlandjournal.com LET US KNOW WHAT YOU THINK Send comments to editor@overlandjournal.com or P.O. Box 1150, Prescott, AZ 86302

Subscriptions 5 issues/year Payment must accompany all orders. Domestic & Canada 1 year $45 US, 2 years $80 US International 1 year $75 US, 2 years $140 US Online at www.overlandjournal.com or P.O. Box 1150, Prescott, AZ 86302 Back Issues Payment must accompany all single-copy orders. Domestic & Canada $15 US (includes p&h) International $20 US (includes p&h) Online at www.overlandjournal.com or P.O. Box 1150, Prescott, AZ 86302 Advertising advertising@overlandjournal.com Moving? Send address changes to service@overlandjournal.com. Include complete old address, with zip code, as well as new address. Allow two to four weeks for address change to become effective. Postmaster Send address changes to: Overland Journal LLC P.O. Box 1150 Prescott, AZ 86302 Overland Journal Summer 2009

OverlandPost Lost and Found Two emails we received recently: I was wondering when the 2009 Gear issue went out. I have not received mine as of yet. I renewed last year and my address is still the same. Or am I jumping the gun a little because it just shipped? Several minutes later:

Ouray, Colorado. Photo by Paul Robinson

Please ignore my previous email. My daughter just pulled my Gear Guide out of her toy box. Gotta love little girls. Alvin Kuenster Land Cruiser 80-Series

More Please I thoroughly enjoyed the G-Wagen article. May we have more please, and some information on accessories vendors? I wait in anticipation for each and every issue . . . they are all top notch! 8

Jeff Geier 1983 LWB 300GD

Good Point Regarding the painting of a photograph in Overland Post (Spring, 2009): It’s important to note that copying a photograph without the express consent of the photographer is a violation of copyright. Unfortunately, professional photographers are virtually forced to pursue such cases, because failure to do so can actually result in a defacto loss of copyright. Jack Dykinga 2004 Toyota Tundra/Four Wheel Camper Editor’s response: Jack is right to point this out. The painting in question was done with permission; to do so without consent is illegal.

A True Adventure Discovering Overland Journal is like melding adventure, travel, photography, culture, and 4WD vehicles in one well-written, superb-quality publication. Having met the people involved, it is a true reflection of their character. How often can something grasp you and make you part of the adventure? Arriving in Prescott shortly after the Overland Expo, and seeing many of the vehicles in your office parking lot, was an added bonus. For a moment I thought I should be taking malaria pills, swatting tsetse flies, and watching for land mines. Having purchased all your back issues . . . where does one start ? Maybe I will change the oil in the 80-Series. Dig out my Tilley travel underwear and head for the roads less traveled. David Richardson Calgary, Alberta Land Cruiser 80-Series

Write us a note

attention: Overland Post editor@overlandjournal.com P. O. Box 1150 Prescott, AZ 86302 Include your name, address, e-mail address, daytime phone number, and the year and make of your vehicle. Letters may be edited for length and clarity.

Where in the world has your Overland Journal been? Send us a photo, along with your name, the location, and a brief description.

Overland Journal Summer 2009

CONTRIBUTORS

Summer 2009

Jennifer Coogan & Isaac Taylor

Lois Pryce

Besides their featured drive through Uttarakhand, Jennifer and Isaac’s recent 4WD journeys include Hawaii’s Big Island, Oman’s Musandam peninsula, and the west fjords of Iceland. They married in 2007, then moved from New York City to northern California via Hyderabad, India. Jennifer drives a turbocharged Subaru Forester. She’s a freelance journalist who’s worked for Reuters and Bloomberg. Her reporting has appeared in the International Herald Tribune, Boston Globe, USA Today, Forbes.com, and Travel + Leisure Magazine. Isaac drove from Massachusetts to Yellowstone before receiving a driver’s license. He’s since explored 47 U.S. states. Isaac works on mapping projects at Google, and drives an old Plymouth while trying to talk his wife into an EarthRoamer.

Weary of the daily grind in jargon-infested London media-land, Lois Pryce jacked in her job at the BBC to ride from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego astride her Yamaha XT225. Upon her return she wrote the book of this trip, Lois on the Loose, which was published in the U.S. and the U.K., as well as being translated into German and Dutch. Itchy wheels struck again and it wasn’t long before she was poring over maps of Africa, plotting another adventure. In October 2006 she set off on a Yamaha TTR250 to ride from London to Cape Town, crossing the Sahara through Algeria and Niger and continuing down the west coast through the Congo and Angola to South Africa. The tale of this trip is captured in her book Red Tape and White Knuckles. Lois lives on a Dutch barge in London with her husband, fellow motorcycle adventurer Austin Vince.

Tom Sheppard

Christophe Noel

Tom has an exploration career spanning 40 years, and totaling over 110,000 overland miles since 1960, including significant exploration in northern Africa and the first-ever lateral crossing of the Sahara from the Atlantic to the Red Sea. Tom is a freelance writer/photographer and consultant, and author of the VehicleDependent Expedition Guide (Desert Winds) and the new Four-by-Four Driving. From the Royal Geographic Society, Tom has received the Ness Award, and the distinction ARPS (Associate of the Royal Photographic Society).

Christophe Noel has been an avid backcountry traveler since he was too young to tie his own stitch-down hiking boots. As his feet have grown, so has his appetite for adventure. While bicycles are his passion, Christophe is an accomplished sea kayaker, backpacker, mountaineer and general vagabond. Having spent much of his life wandering the globe from Alaska to the Atlas Mountains and beyond, Christophe can now be found most days riding his mountain bike on the twisted singletrack near his home in Prescott, Arizona.

Andrew Moore Not content to simply sit behind a desk as a corporate lawyer, Andrew Moore is a 10-year member of the Coconino County Sheriff ’s Search & Rescue team. Certified in wilderness search and technical high-angle rope rescue, Andrew is a wilderness emergency medical technician who uses his talents personally during trips through the southwestern U.S. and Mexico on his trusty BMW 1150GS Adventure or Land Cruiser BJ70. He lives in Flagstaff with his wife of 10 years and his beautiful redheaded daughter.

Overland Journal Summer 2009

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Overland Journal

BLOG

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Overland Journal Summer 2009

JOURNAL ENTRY: From the Editor

Jonathan Hanson

Adventures in Automotive Wonderland “If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense.” - Alice

f someone had told me, five years ago, that in five years Land Rover (and Jaguar) would be owned by an East Indian conglomerate, Chrysler would be controlled by Fiat, and General Motors would be bankrupt . . . well, I might have nodded sagely at the thought of a bankrupt GM, as I flipped through a mental slide show of offerings from the disposable Vega through the lackluster Citation to the ghastly HHR. But in terms of other automotive industry developments we have definitely stepped through the looking glass. What will it all mean? In the end, I think it will mean good things (not, you’ll note, “I’m convinced,” or even, “I’ll bet”). Hopefully there will be no more complacency, no more ennui among American manufacturers—although personal arrogance might take longer to fade, as the Big Three execs showed when they took their corporate jets to their first meeting with Congress. (I wonder how quickly things would change at GM if Rick Wagoner had to drive an HHR everywhere he went . . .) What about the effects on vehicles suitable for overlanding? At least a couple of iconic models are circling in the maelstrom. As I write this, the future of Land Rover’s recent business model is up in the air under its new owner, Tata. The 2009 G4 Challenge was abruptly cancelled last December (before the Overland Journal Summer 2009

Tata purchase was announced, but certainly while it was in the works); recently the Land Rover offices in California were essentially closed down. More worryingly, we’ve heard that the company’s laudable philanthropic programs division is being reworked, to what end we don’t know. I hope they don’t kill it. Reportedly, Tata has given the green light for production of Land Rover’s nifty LRX concept vehicle, although that’s hardly a mainstream expedition machine. More encouragingly, there’s a possibility the Indian military might order a bunch of Defenders, which could keep that line healthy and perhaps even reinvigorated. But those are just rumors at this point. A major re-design of the Defender line is a perennial topic of speculation in marquespecific magazines (much like the “New mid-engined Corvette!” artist’s conceptions constantly recycled in car magazines). Chief among the fates predicted for the Defender are such horrors as unibody construction and independent suspension. Perhaps Tata, with roots in the developing world, will see the continued value of a relatively basic, body-onframe working vehicle—but value it will have to be. Tata is in this to make money, not keep tradition alive. As to the potential of reintroducing the current version of the Defender to the U.S., all I can say is, ain’t gonna happen. What about our homegrown icon, Jeep? Read the excellent Autoblog.com site and

your head will spin at the possible permutations of Fiat/Jeep interbreeding. How about a Fiat Panda (a tiny two-box sedan available in 4WD) rebadged as a Jeep, complete with seven-slot grill? Or an Alfa Romeo (owned by Fiat) SUV built in Toledo, Ohio? The next Jeep Liberty might be built on a Fiat platform. These blends don’t worry me. Fiat has a dodgy reputation in the minds of U.S. consumers with long memories, but everywhere else in the world it’s respected highly, and has engineering might second to no car manufacturer on earth. It’s also thoroughly familiar with the latest high-efficiency, small-displacement diesel technology. Let’s hope some of that comes back across the Atlantic. As to the legendary Wrangler, our country’s only credible effort at a true expeditionworthy four-door platform, I think the management would be crazy to fool with it, and I’ll bet they won’t. Except for adding that high-efficiency diesel, of course. In any case, I have a great idea for a TV commercial that will subtly integrate Jeep’s new relationship into the image. Picture a black Wrangler Unlimited in a high desert setting, rolling through the sagebrush into a hardscrabble clapboard settlement where frightened townsfolk peer out of shuttered windows. Now cue up the Sergio Leone music . . .

Overland Journal Summer 2009

Editor’s

Project Jonathan Hanson

A Year’s Review, Times Two Overland Journal’s first two factory-supplied long-term test vehicles • Space-efficient, squared-off bodywork, which optimizes interior passenger room and cargo space, while providing good driver awareness of the extremities of the vehicle. • Manual transmission. Despite advances in automatic transmission efficiency, and its superiority in certain situations, manual transmissions remain in general the most reliable and fuel-efficient way to transfer power to the axles.

Jeep Wrangler Unlimited Rubicon In the United States, exactly one vehicle manufacturer has stayed true to the formula many experienced travelers believe to be the ideal for an expedition vehicle: • A separate, box-section, ladder-type frame, which creates a durable chassis resistant to damage, to which separate body panels are attached, simplifying repair compared to a unibody structure. A boxed frame simplifies adding heavy-duty front winch and rear tire carrier bumpers. • Solid axles front and rear—the simplest and strongest way to build an axle. The differential housing can be sized to contain a sturdy, large-diameter ring and pinion assembly, and complex CV joints are reduced to a minimum. In contrast to an independent suspension, differential clearance does not decrease when one wheel deflects over an obstacle. • Supple coil-spring suspension, which can produce a comfortable ride even with solid axles, and retain the compliance that helps maintain traction over varying surfaces. Spring rates are easily changed to accommodate heavier loads. • Factory-optional locking differentials in both axles, which enhance traction in severe terrain while maintaining full differential action in most circumstances to reduce tire wear and maintain safe handling. Overland Journal Summer 2009

In the entire world there is but a handful of machines that check all those boxes; here, there is only the Jeep Wrangler Unlimited, which, in an unbroken seven-decade line of descent, has metamorphosed from air-portable battlefield transport, to a light-duty, open-topped recreational 4WD, to a comfortable but simple and strong four-door vehicle capable of being measured against the likes of the Land Rover 110, the Land Cruiser 70 Series, and the Mercedes Benz Gelandewagen as a vehicle fit for extended, remote international travel. Heresy? We think not—and I, personally, am writing this as a threedecade owner of Land Cruisers, and an even longer worshiper of Land Rovers. In practical, technical, and performance specifications, the Wrangler Unlimited holds its own against those icons—even, in markets other than the U.S., to the availability of a frugal turbodiesel powerplant. (Sigh . . .) Thus, we are delighted to announce Overland Journal’s first factorysupplied long-term review vehicle, a 2009 Jeep Wrangler Unlimited Rubicon, which will be with us for a year (at least), giving us ample opportunity to see how it stands up as an overlanding platform. The ultimate specification for a U.S. Wrangler Unlimited (“Unlimited” is simply the nomenclature for the four-door model) is the Rubicon, which includes front and rear manual-locking differentials (electronic), a six-speed manual transmission, a 4:1 ratio transfer case and part-time 4WD, a strong Dana 44 front axle, and electronic swaybar disconnect—all of which establish the Rubicon’s backroad credentials beyond argument. The engine is a 60-degree V6 of modest (3.8-liter) displacement and modest (202 hp; 237 ft-lb) power. On the practical side, the Unlimited’s business-like bodywork surrounds a passenger compartment comfortable for four adults, with

room for plenty of gear for a couple or a small family—82 cubic feet with both split rear seats folded. That pales in comparison to the cavernous freight bay of a 70-Series Troopie, but does well matched against a 110 or even a G-Wagen. Interior styling is thankfully devoid of too much complexity. The upholstery appears durable and stainresistant, and the carpeting is removable, after which the floor can be hosed out via drain plugs. A built-in roll cage backs up the lightweight composite roof, which is removable. Even with a vehicle as well-equipped as this, it’s tempting to start piling on accessories and modifications. However, we’re planning a different approach: We’re going to see what we can do without. Our immediate plan is to add a 12V fridge (specifically one of ARB’s brand new models, already in-hand), probably a dual-battery system, perhaps a heavy-duty front winch bumper and winch—and then toss in some camping equipment and just start going places. Our goal is not to annoy our advertisers—there’s scant chance our

staff or readers are going to stop lusting after accessories, or abruptly decide that their vehicles are modified to perfection. Nor have we suddenly embraced some obscure far-eastern form of asceticism—rather pointless in a 4,000-pound vehicle equipped with AC, cruise control, and one free year of satellite radio. Rather, we want to show that one doesn’t need a $3,000 suspension upgrade, or HID driving lights, or a roof rack or drawer system or trailer, to begin exploring back roads and creating memories. Certainly, the Wrangler Rubicon is a big head start in that area, with its comprehensive standard specification and family-friendly layout. Thus, the plan is to explore first, evaluate the vehicle as is, then, if needed or desired, consider what might add real capability and/or convenience in terms of vehicle performance or multi-day living arrangements. But that will be almost a sideline. With so much of the capability addressed from the factory, this review is going to be all about the journey.

Even with a vehicle as well-equipped as this, it’s tempting to start piling on accessories and modifications. However, we’re planning a different approach:

We’re going to see what we can do without.

Overland Journal Summer 2009

The history of Royal Enfield goes back over 100 years—

it is, in fact, the oldest continuously produced motorcycle in the world,

predating Harley Davidson by two years.

Royal Enfield Bullet 500 EFI

I know what you’re thinking: A Royal what . . . ? How, given all the world-class adventure motorcycles on the planet, did we wind up with a bike few people have ever heard of, and which has to all appearances not a single feature expected of an “adventure” motorcycle? A bike that, in fact, looks like a time-traveling refugee from a 1960s-era burn-up at the Ace Café? For a short answer, I urge you to buy and watch a modest little DVD called Riding Solo to the Top of the World. If it doesn’t inspire you more than the entire Long Way Up, Down, and Sideways collection, you need to reconsider your definition of the “adventure” part of adventure motorcycling. Riding Solo is entirely the production of one man, Guarav Jani, one video camera, and one motorcycle—a hideously overloaded, 350cc, single-cylinder Royal Enfield, on which Jani explored one of the most remote regions of the Himalayas, the Changthang Plateau, and conquered the Marsimek-la Pass, at 18,634 feet. With a carburetor. Tell me that’s not an adventure motorcycle. The history of Royal Enfield goes back over 100 years—it is, in fact, the oldest continuously produced motorcycle in the world, predating Harley Davidson by two years. Originally British, RE’s bikes served in two world wars (a special, 125-pound paratrooper model called the Flying Flea saw action against the Third Reich) and provided frugal transportation for thousands of civilians. In 1955 the Indian government ordered 800 350cc Royal Enfield Bullets for its army and police forces, and soon an agreement was reached to manufacture the model in India. In a twist of fate, when the factory in England succumbed to the mass die-off of British motorcycle brands, the Indian factory kept right on chugging away, producing simple, crudely finished, but tough and easy-to-repair 350cc and 500cc Royal Enfield models that survived all the abuse third-world users could heap on them. Styling pretty much froze when the first Indian Bullet rolled off the line in 1956. So did technology. Overland Journal Summer 2009

In the U.S. and Europe, the Indian Royal Enfields have long been the passion of a miniscule group of enthusiasts willing to put up with handbuilt standards of fit and finish that would make a Japanese robot-quality-control inspector contemplate sepuku, and who were also willing—even eager—to attain the type of intimate mechanical familiarity with their machines that few riders have since British motorcycles stopped leaking oil on American driveways. Sure, their philosophy said, they might now and then find themselves by the roadside tinkering on carburetor or points with a screwdriver or multitool, while riders on fabulously sophisticated European or Oriental motorcycles rode by snickering, but if those riders’ ECUs or ABSs or ASCs ever went south, the only tool that would do them any good would be a cell phone. (Then, too, Bullet riders do their own snickering when they pass those other riders stopped at gas pumps. The modestly powered REs commonly exceed 75 mpg.) However—time marches on, even for Royal Enfield. The company wants to expand its world market, especially in Europe and the U.S., and that resulted in a head-on collision with modern emissions regulations. Also, five-decade-old standards of finish simply weren’t going to cut it in the 21st-century. The question was, could the company’s product retain its classic styling and mechanical simplicity, while improving quality, meeting regulations, and updating just a few components (such as the anachronistic drum front brake)? Our long-term G5 is Royal Enfield’s answer to that question. It’s one of two new models (the other being the even more retro-styled C5), and is the result of a concerted effort to modernize production methods at the Royal Enfield factory, while retaining the character that makes the bikes what they are. The most notable technological leap is the fuel injection on the 500cc single-cylinder engine, which meets Euro IV emissions standards, increases power (from around 23 to a stomping 27.5 horsepower), enhances high-elevation performance, and, if anything, should boost fuel economy even further. The other

notable addition is the front disk brake (the rear is still a drum). So—is the new Royal Enfield now neither fish nor fowl, essentially fooling would-be buyers with classic styling but trailing the baggage of a complex, dealer-only-serviced engine management system? Perhaps not. The Royal Enfield engineers were aware of the controversy that would surround a computer-controlled Bullet, and took a couple of interesting steps to enhance the independence that RE riders have always cherished. First, in addition to an electric starter, the G5 still sports a kick-start lever, so a bike with a battery strong enough to fire the engine but too weak to turn the starter motor can still be ridden. Of much more import, however, is the simple user diagnostic system incorporated into the engine management computer. In the event of a fault, a single wire under the seat serves as a complete diagnostic tool. When the wire is grounded to the frame, the engine light in the headlamp nacelle will flash in a predetermined sequence. By consulting a chart in the owner’s manual, the rider can determine exactly what the problem is. You might still be stranded, but you’ll know exactly what to do to fix it. No expensive code reader—or flatbed truck to the dealer—needed. And the fuel injection system is in many ways simpler than a carburetor to begin with. In all other aspects, the new Royal Enfield should satisfy purists.

Craftsmanship hasn’t disappeared: The pinstriping, for example, is still done (flawlessly) by hand. The G5’s styling is the quintessence of what a motorcycle ought to look like, with clearly delineated parts: engine there, fuel tank there, fenders there. John Irving put it well in his early novel, Setting Free the Bears, as he described the vintage Royal Enfield that plays a central role in the plot: “ . . . when they made the pieces look the way they worked.” You won’t need to remove a half-dozen composite body panels to change the plug (singular) or oil, or adjust the chain, on the new Bullet. And you can still expect more attention at rest stops than the guys on those tall orange bikes ever receive. “That’s beautiful. What year is it?” is the most common comment. How will the new EFI Bullet perform? We’ll see over the next year, the term Royal Enfield graciously allowed us for the review. (Overland Journal is, as far as I can determine, the first U.S. magazine to ever receive a Royal Enfield motorcycle for a long-term test.) We have no intention of trying to negotiate the kind of terrain that the big BMWs and KTMs can tackle, but we’ll see how the G5 does on a combination of small paved highways and remote dirt roads. I’m betting we’ll have more than enough fun to confirm the new Bullet’s continuing status as a true adventure motorcycle.

Overland Journal Summer 2009

NEWS FROM THE TRADE Exploring the newest gear for overlanding

diesel and alternative-fuel news Lost opportunities, and new ones

BIG news from

Toyota

Toyota has released a diesel/electric hybrid! Before you head for your dealer— it’s only available as a forklift. But it’s a step in an interesting direction. (My family’s forklift is powered by a 2F engine, factory-converted to propane. I wonder if this new 2.5 liter diesel electric would swap over as well . . .)

by Kevin Rowland

The U.S. automotive industry is in turmoil. Companies are being bought and sold on an hourly basis, and it’s difficult to put a finger on what guiding force will be pushing any given brand. Certainly the oddest news is that Hummer now belongs to China—which could be a good thing if smaller platforms like the HX concept get pushed along. On the other hand, the new GM 4.5 engine that might have been a possibility for a more ecological Hummer is now collecting dust somewhere, as is Ford’s mid-sized diesel. The German auto makers are the only ones continuing to push clean-diesel technology in the states, and they’re being rewarded with brisk sales. Volkswagen’s TDI Jettas have been practically flying off the shelves, as have the diesel offerings from Mercedes. Unfortunately the VW pickup truck we reported on last year (now called the Amarok) won’t be heading for the U.S. with its TDI engine. Despite the obvious demand, the diesel market is still being largely ignored. Weird. All this leaves the door wide open for Mahindra, whose big stumbling block thus far has been the lack of reputable and available dealers. With many ex-Chrysler dealers looking for a line to carry on their lots, Mahindra might have an opportunity to expand its network. Reportedly, imports of a utilitarian, turbodiesel pickup truck are on schedule for early 2010.

Fast motorcycles, no gas As a follow-up to our mention of Mission Motors last issue, who claimed their Mission One was the fastest electric motorcycle in the world: The prestigious Isle of Man grand prix course proved them wrong, for now at least. During a recent zero-emissions race around the famous island, the Mission Motors team suffered technical difficulties and finished in fourth place, about a minute and a half behind the winning team from Agni Motors.

Overland Journal Summer 2009

A source for hard-to-find diesel parts One of the “greenest” options for certain vehicles is replacing a worn-out gas engine with a frugal diesel powerplant. But the search for parts for non-NAS diesels can be an adventure in itself. Overland Journal found an excellent resource in Guerra International, which provided oil filters and belts for our project 60-Series’ International turbodiesel at a fraction of what we’d been paying. If you’re having a hard time finding replacement parts for nearly any odd powertrain combination, you might want to see what the folks at Guerra can do for you. They stock a comprehensive line. guerrainternational.com, 305-437-7992

Overland Journal Summer 2009

NEWS FROM THE TRADE Exploring the newest gear for overlanding

Pelican 0450WD Mobile Tool Chest $540 We’ve been carrying tool rolls and repair kits in Pelican cases for a long time, so we’re excited to see Pelican’s Mobile Tool Chest, specifically designed for storing and easily accessing tools in field conditions.Born out of a requirement for the U.S. military, the 0450 features a customizable drawer arrangement, with up to eight shallow drawers in the main compartment, plus a large top tray. When closed, the 0450 is water- and dust-proof, and constructed to endure years of serious work. The unit measures 24 by 14.75 by 18 inches, and weighs 41 pounds. pelican.com, and available from expeditionexchange.com, 310-618-1875

Viking Off-Road Recovery Hitch

$110

Thor Jonsson at Viking Off-Road set out to design and produce the ultimate receiver-mounted shackle bracket. Designed with SolidWorks CAD software and CNC-machined from a billet of 1018 steel, the hitch is nickel-plated for a durable and clean finish. Viking Off-Road stress-tested the unit to failure and found it withstood shock loading to 52,200 pounds for more than 1,000 load cycles. The hitch is designed for use with Viking’s 4.75-metric-ton shackles, giving a working load limit of 10,471 pounds and a 4X safety factor, for a minimum breaking strength of 41,884 pounds. vikingoffroad.com, 818-506-9789

Kilby Enterprises Exploration Products $150 to $450

To accommodate the growing demand for the Jeep Wrangler Unlimited as an exploration vehicle, Kilby Enterprises has released a series of cargo management products in addition to their bumpers and skidplates. The system starts with an interior rack ($350), which creates two levels of secured storage. The rack is constructed from one-inch square tubing, and measures 42 inches wide by 27 inches deep, with four-inch-tall side rails. Most interesting is their flooring kit ($450), which replaces the rear seats to create a perfectly flat surface, useful for sleeping in the vehicle, mounting a fridge, or securing hard cases. To complement the rack and flooring kit, a set of 14-gauge cargo panels ($150) mount in the space between and behind the rear roll bar. These panels can be used to mount 12-volt sockets, an inverter, a VHF/UHF radio, etc. kilbyenterprises.com, 818-565-5945 Overland Journal Summer 2009

Delkin Devices Fat Gecko Camera Mount

$90

Need to mount a still or video camera to your vehicle? The Delkin Fat Gecko uses two 3.25-inch-diameter suction cups to cling like a Hemidactylus frenatus to virtually any flat, non-porous surface such as bodywork or a windshield. Just set it in place, press the two big buttons that say PRESS, then flip the clamp levers. Adhered to clean paint on a Jeep’s hood, there was simply no way we could pull this, uh, sucker off. A 5.5-inch stalk and two ball joints enable aiming the camera virtually any direction without removing the clamps (which is easy after releasing the levers). Delkin also makes a comprehensive sensor-cleaning kit for digital cameras. Look for a full review soon. delkin.com, 800-637-8087

Proxxon 43-piece Vehicle Tool Kit

$275

Proxxon Industrial has released a series of German-made tool kits specifically designed to be stored in a vehicle or on an adventure motorcycle. Thilo Kass, of T-Lo’s Ultimate Off-Road, in Prescott, AZ, made us aware of the brand as he was repairing some massive Unimog drive train components. We’re currently testing a metric kit, which includes a 1/2-inch ratchet and 8mm-24mm six-point sockets, two Knipex piers, 12 combination wrenches (6 – 15, 17 and 19mm), six Felo screwdrivers, a hammer, a 12-volt circuit tester, and a set of allen hex wrenches. proxxon.com, and available from mogsrus.com, 928-443-8880

Osprey Flap Jack $80

This 1,200-cubic-inch messenger bag is designed for travel. Its main compartment can store and secure a 17-inch laptop in a padded sleeve, with room left for several guidebooks and an SLR camera. The small outer compartment has storage for a phone, music player, and smaller documents. Made from recycled bottles, the bag has a wide, comfortable shoulder strap and Fastex-style buckles for accessing the compartments. Overland Journal’s designer carried the Flap Jack through Central America, and loved it because it could carry her camera, MacBook and other essential travel gear—but mostly because hers is orange. ospreypacks.com, 866-284-7830 Overland Journal Summer 2009

NEWS FROM THE TRADE Exploring the newest gear for overlanding

National Geographic Baja Maps $12

Aerostich Ultralight Rain Pants $77

Even in the 21st century, it’s difficult to find detailed road and trail maps of Baja, especially with the Baja Almanac out of print. National Geographic’s Baja California and Baja California Sur AdventureMaps combine detailed terrain with local information for traveling on Baja’s secondary roads. Together, the two maps cover the entire Baja peninsula and include detailed insets of Tijuana, Mexicali, Ensenada, La Paz, San Jose Del Cabo, and Cabo San Lucas. We checked the maps in detail; they show even obscure routes such as the northern access to San Evaristo, and the Naranja Road. Like all National Geographic AdventureMaps, the new Baja titles are printed on durable, waterproof, tear-resistant material designed to stand up to typical field conditions. natgeomaps.com, 800-437-5521

Four-wheeled vehicle owners take note: The Ultralight Rain Pants might have been designed for motorcycle riders, but they’ll fit just as easily in a glove box or center console as in a pannier. Inside their zippered pouch (which converts to an inside pocket once the pants are on), they take up no more room than a softball, yet boast features such as full seam taping, and long weatherproof side zippers so you can don them over boots. They’re drawstring-cinched and fit easily over armored clothing. While obviously not meant for heavy use, they make perfect backup protection for unplanned downpours. Note: The smallest size is medium, which proved pretty baggy on our 150-pound executive editor’s frame; maybe add small, Aerostich? aerostich.com, 800-222-1994

Touratech Expedition Tank Kit: F800GS and F650GS BMW $1,985 Touratech-USA has introduced an oversized fuel tank kit for the BMW F800GS and F650GS twin cylinder motorcycles. The kit includes the additional tank, supply lines, and fittings for a gravity-feed connection to the stock under-seat tank. The auxiliary tank is crafted from tough polyamide nylon. The combined volume of 9.5 gallons (36 liters) more than doubles the mileage range over the 4.2 gallon stock fuel capacity, making the F800/650GS motorcycles capable of long-distance adventure riding. The tank installs in the normal position of a motorcycle tank, replacing the front body panels on the bike and maintaining the aggressive BMW styling. touratech-usa.com, 800-491-2926

Overland Journal Summer 2009

NEWS FROM THE TRADE Exploring the newest gear for overlanding

KC HiLites Mounting Bracket $27

Roll bars and roll cages provide strong, convenient places to mount a variety of things you might want at a moment’s notice, from fire extinguishers and flashlights all the way up to Hi-Lift jacks. But drilling through the bar is not the best approach to maintain perfect structural integrity, and if you decide to move whatever it was you put there, you’re left with a redundant hole. Arizona-based KC HiLites has a versatile answer in their molded composite mounting brackets. Designed to clamp to round tubing from 1.5 to two inches in diameter, the U.S.-made brackets provide a flat, seven-square-inch mounting surface and a 1/2-inch hole (which can be enlarged). The utility of these is limited mostly by your imagination. Just remember to mount those accessories where your head can’t impact them during a collision. kchilites.com, 928-635-2607

Off-Road Trail Tools Wheel Chock $100

Off-Road Trail Tools has just sent us the most versatile wheel chock we’ve ever used. Made in the U.S. and designed for winching operations and trail repairs, the wide chock is large enough to support the leverage of winching, and grips the tire with a dimple-die traction surface. The unit can be used as a traditional wheel chock, or folded up and used as a Hi-Lift jacking base, or laid flat and used as a 30-inch-long traction ladder on sand, snow, and mud. We can also see it easily functioning as a shower platform—beats getting your floor mats soggy. When folded, it measures just 9.75 x 6.75 x 1.5 inches. offroadtrailtools.com, 520-579-2079

Great Basin Rovers (GBR) Axles and 4.14 Gear Set $375 to $900

With the closing of Maxi-Drive in Australia, Great Basin Rovers has worked to design and manufacture its own line of axles and gearsets for the Discovery Series 1, Range Rover Classic, and Defender. The axles are specified in three stages: Stage One ($375), a one-piece, double-heat-treated, 1541-H steel axle with integrated hub; Stage Two ($500), a two-piece, custom-flanged axle constructed from chromoly; and Stage Three ($900), which is an aviation-grade two-piece design. Front CV axles will be available in two stages; the Stage Two CVs are constructed of aviation-grade alloy. All are bolt-in, 24-spline axles and work with factory alloy wheels. GBR has also released a new 4.14:1 ring and pinion kit ($450), which utilizes a 7/29 pinion and ring gear for ultimate strength. Tests have shown the 4.14 ratio to be 20 percent stronger than the current 4.11 ratio.

greatbasinrovers.com, 801-486-5049 Overland Journal Summer 2009

Overland Journal Summer 2009

OVERLAND NEWS Showcasing expedition travelers and resources from around the globe

One Crazy Ride Follow Gaurav Jani and four other riders as they travel to the farthest reaches of India on Royal Enfield motorcycles. Gaurav is an accomplished filmmaker: His very first production, Riding Solo to the Top of the World, collected no fewer than 11 film festival awards. In this newest feature film, Gaurav and friends ride to the remote Himalayan state of Arunachal Pradesh, in Northeast India. As with

($25)

Riding Solo, Guarav’s new effort was filmed without a backup vehicle or film crew. Some of the sound quality early on is a bit muddy, but it improves later on. Promise from us: One scene, which involves a fully laden motorcycle and an ancient suspension bridge, will be worth the price of the entire DVD. dirttrackproductions.com

Vanishing America Project Holt Webb, a photographer and adventure traveler, has set out across the United States to document historical aspects of our country that are in danger of being lost forever. In his own words: “America is changing fast. And, sometimes change is good. But sometimes change destroys the things we love about our country. Hopefully these images, and the ones that will follow as I travel across the United States, will remind people how precious, how ephemeral, and how important these aspects of our country and our culture are.” Holt’s images are intended to capture the way of life, homes, belongings, and accomplishments of previous generations of Americans, as well as documenting endangered habitats and wildlife. He travels in a diesel RV and Cummins-diesel-converted Land Rover Defender 90, both modified to run on vegetable oil. Holt was selected at the Overland Expo.2009 to receive Overland Society’s Overland Expedition Flag. His images and story will be featured in Overland Journal in 2010. vanishingamerica.net

Overland Journal Summer 2009

Expedition Reads

Two epic journeys conceived and tackled

by mere mortals

By Jonathan Hanson

There are three kinds of expedition narratives. The first kind tells the story of a journey so bold and visionary that one is left thinking, There’s no way I could do that trip, but I’m glad someone did. The second kind tells of a journey so hazardous and fraught with disaster that one concludes, You couldn’t pay me to do that trip, but I’m glad I read about it. The third kind is perhaps not as dramatic, but is the best in many ways, because it leaves one thinking, Hey—I could do something like that. Here are two of that kind.

Overland to India, by Gordon G. May Gordon May restored a 55-year-old, British-built, 500cc Royal Enfield motorcycle in the spare room of his Manchester flat—nearly getting evicted in the process—then decided to do something interesting in the way of a shakedown cruise. Overland to India chronicles the resulting 8,400-mile, seven-week journey. Gordon is familiar to anyone familiar with Royal Enfield motorcycles; he’s written several authoritative histories of the marque. But the scope of this rebuild project and the resulting expedition exceeded anything he had accomplished before. His inspiration was a 1956 journey by two East Indian university students, who rode the very first Royal Enfield motorcycle manufactured in India from the new factory in Thiruvottiyur to the then-stilloperative British Royal Enfield factory in Redditch. Gordon essentially reversed their course. The narrative of Overland to India reveals Gordon as modest, even self-deprecating, but determined—he’s always willing to give credit to others for his successes, and always considerate of local customs and situations (odd exceptions are the frequent references to his vegetarianism, strict adherence to which seems to skirt the edge of politeness toward local hosts more than once). It won’t spoil anything to tell you that the book includes plenty of characters, uncountable episodes detailing the kindness of strangers, a few bandits, and one serious crash. But I won’t tell you whether or not he made it all the way to Thiruvottiyur on a five-decade-old British motorcycle. You’ll have to read that for yourself. I think you’ll be glad you did. (Rixon Groove, 2008), overlandtoindia.co.uk 28

Overland – A Mercedes-Benz Journey Through the Americas, by Gari Stroh Gari Stroh tackles a different hemisphere in Overland – A Mercedes-Benz Journey Through the Americas. But his choice of vehicle was nearly as interesting, and more practical for most readers: a 20-year-old diesel Gelandewagen 300GD. Gari drove it south from his home in Vail, Colorado, through Mexico and Central America, and then on an enormous loop around the circumference of South America, reaching Ushuaia at his southernmost point, and covering 34,000 miles in the process. Overland relates the trip in enough detail to give followers in his footsteps a wealth of germane information on border crossings, local road conditions, trans-ithsmus ferry strategies, and much more. Throughout, the book is illustrated with color photographs, along with copies of receipts, bills of lading, passport pages, and other items that add whimsically to the appeal. Overland Journal Summer 2009

In contrast to Gordon May’s impecunious expedition, it’s clear Gari had few if any budget restraints—he is, after all, a fifth-generation member of the Stroh brewing family. To his credit, he camped on many if not most nights of the trip, but occasional splurges at upscale hotels seemed to be no problem, and when he reached La Paz, Bolivia, admitting that he was “tired and becoming irritable,” he parked the GWagen in the basement of the Radisson and flew home for six months to recharge his interest. That jarring note aside, he seems a personable traveler, picking up hitchhikers and stopping to talk to anyone he found interesting. I questioned his wisdom in ducking out of an (admittedly suspicious) police fine in Honduras with a fake driver’s license—a stunt sure to breed ill will toward the next American tourists to come along— but on the whole I enjoyed his account. Gari is amusingly enthusiastic about the family business: I lost count of his dabblings in indigenous brews. It’s fitting that the collage on the final pages of Overland includes two labels from local beers. If you can find it, this book might best be enjoyed along with a bottle of Huari Bolivian Pilsener, to keep you in the mood. (StarGroup International, 2008), amazon.com

Overland Journal Summer 2009

Red Tape, White Knuckles,

Brown Mud part two

Lois reluctantly races the calendar to exit Angola before her five-day visa expires Story and photography by Lois Pryce

Overland Journal Summer 2009

I made the 160 miles to Luanda by the skin of my teeth,

and certainly not before dark, as I had hoped. The road worsened as I headed

endless tracts of sludge punctuated by vast flooded sections, and I struggled along in the pouring rain at a south, turning into

painfully slow speed.

My progress would often grind to a near halt as I battled my way through banks of long reeds to avoid drowning my bike in the waist-high muddy water that passed for a road in this part of the world. I was riding as hard and as fast as I could, but the soaking and the pounding I was taking was making me increasingly exhausted, and for the first time on this journey I feared that I was physically unable to cope with what I had set out to do—a thought that had never troubled me before, even in the Sahara and the Congo. The dim lights and broken-up streets of Luanda came as a relief after my mud-bath, but arriving in an African capital city in the dark is not something that will ever appear in a list of Top Travel Tips. As I floundered around the murky outskirts, I tried to get my bearings and work out where I was going to spend the night. Luanda’s population had been swollen by an influx of rural Angolans, forced into the city by the civil war, and there was a palpable sense that the capital was heaving, that this relatively small colonial city was struggling to cope with its new residents. Tower blocks were strewn with washing hanging from every window, the streets were stuffed solid with traffic, and the displaced masses milled about all over the pavement. It should have been intimidating, but it wasn’t; in fact there was a tangible sense of bonhomie, the same relaxed good cheer that had existed in the bleak streets of N’zeto, multiplied a thousand fold. As I pored over my map of the city outside a petrol station I was once again saved, by yet another Angolan guardian angel. This time it was David, a dapper young man who I’m sure had better things to do on a Saturday night, but who insisted on leading me to a hotel—and showing me a few sights on the way. Overland Journal Summer 2009

“This is the cathedral . . . and here we have the port where the . . . and this is a good view over the . . .” and so it went on. I was shattered, soaking wet, covered in mud, and starving hungry, the latter being largely due to the fact that my supplies of bananas, bread and tomatoes had been pulverised into an unappetising puree over the course of the day’s riding. I wanted nothing more than to wash, eat, and sleep, and not necessarily in that order, but David was so kind that I went along with his impromptu sightseeing tour, making polite appreciative comments. The following day it took me three hours to get out of this relatively small city, mainly due to the fact that since my map had been printed the president had renamed all the streets after his friends and family, causing me much bemused head-scratching. The incessant flooding didn’t make things easier, but eventually I broke away and began heading into the heartland of the country. The tropics were just a memory as I climbed to a plateau that reminded me more of wild parts of Wales than of anything I had seen in Africa. It was hilly and grassy, dotted with trees and big outcrops of rock, and for the first time in ages I felt cold. It was a strange, long-forgotten sensation after so long in the harsh baking sun of the Sahara and the sticky heat of the jungle. The unwelcome cocktail of rain, mud, and non-stop riding continued, but when I wasn’t feeling sorry for myself, I was feeling sorry for the poor Angolans. Out here in this more populated part of the country, reminders of their long and tragic civil war were evident wherever I looked. Every town was a bomb site; people were living in their halfdemolished homes, and the walls of houses,

shops, banks, even churches, were smattered with bullet holes. Abandoned tanks lay by the side of the road; victims of land mines hobbled through the streets with half a leg missing, and children played with bullets in the mud. This had once been a real, functioning nation; you could see the remains of it in the abandoned, bullet-sprayed hotels and the shops whose neon signs no longer flashed, in the road signs, rendered almost illegible with machine-gun fire, and the overgrown, rusty tracks of the railways. When the civil war kicked off in 1975, following independence, the Portuguese upped and left in a huge airlift, one of the biggest mass exoduses in history, leaving the native Angolans to fight amongst themselves, which is exactly what they did for the next 27 years. But with the Portuguese went all the knowledge, skills, and expertise of running a country, and the black Angolans were left in something of a fix. It was not dissimilar to a couple of parents deciding their squabbling children are too much trouble after all, and bailing out of the family home, leaving the kids to grow up without them. Considering this terrible past, I couldn’t understand for the life of me why the Angolan people were the kindest, most hospitable bunch of folk I had encountered in Africa. Everywhere I stopped I was met with a friendly smile, sometimes an attempt at a greeting in English, but always genuine warmth and curiosity. There was none of the hustling or scamming or begging that I had encountered in other African countries. Most startlingly, they weren’t interested in what I could do for them, but what they could for me, and this humbling show of humanity helped to put my own tribulations into perspective.

my path, scratching my face and ripping my waterproofs, allowing yet more rain to soak me quite literally to the skin. I was out in wild, high, open country now, with not a glimmer of civilisation in sight. There were no signs of people living here; they had probably been forced out in the civil war’s slashing and burning of the villages. I longed to see some sort of evidence of the human hand at work, just a hut or a farmhouse, a truck or a car. But the only signs of man’s existence were grim and sinister, in the shape of rusting tanks at the side of the road and the crumbling concrete of improvised roadblocks. Trying to avoid another flooded crater, I hugged the side of the track, sticking to a gul-

ley, but my front wheel hit a submerged log, the bike jolted, and before I could correct the steering, it toppled over to the left, taking me with it and trapping my left foot between the crankcase and a rock. The pain sent shockwaves through my leg as I felt the bonecrunching impact of the rock and my ankle being wrenched and twisted as I struggled to free myself. Summoning up some adrenalinfueled superhuman strength, I pushed my body weight against the bike, forcing it upright again. Swinging my right leg over the saddle, I restarted the motor and continued onwards through the mud and rain without a pause. I had reached some weird state of mindless, almost hypnotic doggedness, and I realised with

Photo edit by Jacob Lichner

Things were looking good as day four of my Angolan dash dawned. For a start, it wasn’t raining, so I set off thankful for this small, morale-boosting mercy. My delay in getting out of Luanda had knocked me back, and I now had just two days to cover 700 miles. My body ached from the incessant pummeling of riding on these dire roads, but I didn’t care about that, just as long my bike was holding out, which much to my amazement it was. It started on the button, and no matter what dramas unfolded and what punishment I foisted upon it, it just kept going. As for myself, I had learnt to expect very little now from each day, and if it ended with the bike and me in one piece, I considered it to be successful. I wasn’t really sure if I was exactly enjoying myself I was merely existing, operating like a machine: ride, eat, sleep, ride, eat, sleep . . . I made good progress in the morning along roads of bomb-damaged asphalt and half-decent dirt, and at lunch time, arriving in the town of Huamba earlier than expected, I made the decision to press on without stopping. But my good fortune was not set to continue, and soon the heavy grey skies exploded in a furious storm. Thunder rumbled in the distance, and jagged flashes of bluishwhite lightning streaked across the sky. The storm coincided with the road entering a pine forest, which gave a degree of protection from the pouring rain, but the densely packed trees blocked out any sunlight, and in the dank heart of the forest the ground had turned to a swamp, never having known the drying warmth of the sun’s rays. The forest was ancient and dark, thick with the rich scent of pine, but the trail that led me through the woods was muddy beyond anything I had encountered, even in the Congo, and my progress slowed to a crawl as I battled my way along the churned-up track. It was hard to believe that this barely navigable trail was the main route between two of Angola’s major cities, marked as a promising thick red line by Michelin’s cartographers, but as I knew only too well by now, only a fool believes the map. Soon I was out of the forest and back in the storm that was howling across the desolate plateau. The sky was black and the crashing thunder moved nearer and nearer with every clap. The rain was ceaseless, coming down in sheets, but the ground could no longer absorb it quickly enough, and torrents of muddy water flowed past me while huge chunks of the dirt road disintegrated before my eyes. Overhanging trees and thorn bushes dangled in

Overland Journal Summer 2009

Photo edit by Jacob Lichner

Overland Journal Summer 2009

I had ridden 500 yards into a minefield, and now I had to ride back out again. The only way to do this was to follow my tyre tracks exactly, but they were dissolving before my very eyes;

the rain was washing them away as quickly as I made them.

shock that my customary, very vocal, response to such an incident had not been forthcoming. I hadn’t howled, screamed, or even whimpered in pain when my foot had been crushed; in fact, not a single word had passed my lips, not even a swear word. If I had given up complaining and swearing, things were really bad. In cruel, glaring contrast to my successful morning, it was now half past four and I had managed just 60 miles since lunchtime. Sod this! I thought bitterly. Why didn’t I just stay in Huamba at lunchtime, and sod the transit visa! Why don’t I just accept that I’ll get roughed up at the border for overstaying, pay the bribe, and have done with it? Whatever happens, it couldn’t be as bad as this. But even if I did decide to take my own advice, it still didn’t answer the pressing question of what I was going to do right now, and where I was going to stay tonight? I looked at the map and saw that the town of Caconda was coming up in about 40 miles. At this rate it would take me at least two hours to get there, I would be riding in the dark yet again and I didn’t know what I would find, but it was bound to have somewhere I could shelter for the night, even if it was a bombed-out house. The rain continued its endless hammering, the thunderclaps moved ever nearer in terrifying crescendos, and the lightning ripped across the darkening sky. It was a storm of biblical proportions, and I wondered briefly if it was my punishment for lying about being a Roman Catholic on my visa form. Troubled by such ridiculous notions, I figured I might be losing my mind, and I forced myself to think solid, rational thoughts. I shall triumph through reason and logic! I declared, which was quite handy as immediately after I had made this statement I came upon a fork in the road which wasn’t marked on the map, and with nothing remotely like a road sign to aid the traveller, clear rational thinking was my only hope. The left fork showed the broken remains of the tarmac leading off into some woods,

while the right fork was a most unappealing option; here was the inundacao repentina that the border guard had warned me about. It was a rock-strewn, muddy track, but was currently under a foot of fast-flowing water; the heavy rain had turned it into a treacherous river and I hoped, and almost prayed, that this was not the route to Caconda. I dillied and I dallied, looked at the map and the compass, and tried to orient myself in the dim light and the pouring rain. There were faint tyre marks in the mud leading to the right fork, but then again, the scraps of old tarmac on the left fork suggested the course of the original road, but on the other hand it did look quite overgrown, almost abandoned. What to do? If only there was someone around to ask. But there was no one, and there were no solid clues to help me either. Then, as I stared at the left hand fork I noticed, among the bushes, that this route was lined with concrete posts about a foot high; they were painted red and white and looked quite official. This must be it, I decided and secretly thankful to not be riding up the torrential river, I headed off down the old road, following the line of the posts, bumping over the smashed-up blacktop and slaloming around the bigger potholes. I don’t know why, but after about 500 yards I had a sensation that something wasn’t quite right. I’m not sure what caused me to stop and question my decision, but it was no more than a feeling, some kind of intuition, and nothing whatsoever to do with the reason and logic in which I trusted so deeply for my survival and sanity. Whatever this force was, it persuaded me to go back to the junction and think again. I swung a wide U-turn through the bushes around one of the posts and as I did so, my headlight caught the white painted concrete, illuminating a patch of faded red lettering. I stopped and peered closer, and as I read the words my heart froze. Weathered by Angolan rain and sun, it was only just leg-

ible, but it told me everything I needed to know. Underneath a crude motif of a skull and crossbones were the words that shook me to the core, PERIGO MINAS. But just in case you hadn’t got the picture, in small letters there was an English translation too. It said: Danger Mines. A deafening roar of thunder and an almost simultaneous flash of lightning exploded above me and the rain lashed down harder than ever. I was in the thick of the storm, sitting in the middle of a minefield. What were the chances of that? And what a choice? Struck by lightning or blown apart by a landmine? Or possibly both. At the same time even! I sat there on the bike, trying to control my thumping heart. All the bad roads, the hard riding, the tumbles in the mud; they all paled into insignificance. Now I really had a situation on my hands. I had ridden 500 yards into a minefield, and now I had to ride back out again. The only way to do this was to follow my tyre tracks exactly, but they were dissolving before my very eyes; the rain was washing them away as quickly as I made them. As I rode back the way I had come I felt a strange sense of calm envelop me, as if my fate was out of my hands and I was high above, looking down on my filthy, bedraggled self, pottering through an Angolan minefield in the pouring rain. None of it seemed real. It wasn’t until I reached the junction in one piece that my true state of distress surfaced. Some survival mechanism had aided me through the minefield but now, faced with the far less dangerous task of riding up the river, my peculiarly eerie calm disintegrated and I entered some kind of delayed shock. I heard myself calling out “Help! Somebody help!” But of course there was no one to hear my plea, and I knew this, but just shouting it seemed to make me feel better and I set forth into the water. But my judgment was failing Overland Journal Summer 2009

I was close to tears of sheer desperation now,

but adrenalin kicked in and with a massive wrench I hauled the bike

off the rock and

back into the knee-deep water.

me and my riding was suffering; it wasn’t that the river with its rocks and mud was technically beyond me; I’d ridden worse things in Wales for fun. But the success of riding up this river lay in picking the right line and my exhausted, traumatised-verging-on-hysterical brain was no longer functioning properly and stupid mistake followed stupid mistake. Within a few yards I had ground to a halt with the bike rocking to and fro like a seesaw, marooned where the bottom of the engine had become stuck on a submerged rock. Neither of the wheels was touching the ground and my only option was to climb off into the water and heave the bike backwards off the rock. Perched in this awkward position, the handlebars were level with my shoulders and with the centre of gravity so high, I could hardly move the bike at all, and I certainly didn’t feel confident to keep it upright should it start to fall. Dusk was falling now, and the fading light magnified every problem a thousand times. I was close to tears of sheer desperation now, but adrenalin kicked in and with a massive wrench I hauled the bike off the rock and back into the knee-deep water. Slumped over the handlebars in utter despair and exhaustion, catching my breath and trying not to think about what I was going to do next, I heard a new noise. Not the noise of the hammering rain or the thunder, or the rushing river. It was a mechanical noise, the gentle splutter of a two-stroke motorcycle engine. I must be imagining things, I thought, but when I turned round, either I was hallucinating or there was a smiling young man wearing fake Gucci sunglasses and spankingly clean white trainers, sitting astride a little twostroke bike at the junction and watching me with an amused expression. I was overcome with joy to see this stranger, but I was so distraught that I didn’t even greet him, I just started waving my arms around and pointing up the river. “Caconda? Caconda? Aqui? Caconda, sim?” I cried, seeking confirmation of what I already knew. Overland Journal Summer 2009

He nodded calmly, confirming my desperate pointing and hand-waving that, indeed, this torrent of water was the road to Caconda. Then he rode over to me and stopped, still smiling his gently amused smile and still wearing his sunglasses, despite the fact it was almost dark. “You are from England?” he said. “Yes.” “Aah . . .” he nodded his head knowingly. “You ride to Cape Town from England, yes?” “Er, well, actually . . . yes. Yes, I am,” I said, surprised that he had sussed me out so quickly. He shook his head and smiled in amused pity, as if to say, you crazy white people, you do this for fun, and we have to live like this, day in day out. I felt properly foolish. Then he laughed and patted me on the arm. “Come on! Follow me!” he called out over his shoulder as he plunged into the flood water. I couldn’t believe it. How many guardian angels did I have in Angola? Or were they all the same one, cropping up in different guises when I needed them most? This latest one knew all the nifty shortcuts to avoid the rocks and the muddy bits and the deep bits, and when there was no option but to ride through the water, he lifted his feet off the foot-pegs to save his spotless trainers. His bike was a tatty old Yamaha 125; it had worn-out road tyres and his rear wheel bearings were shot to bits, but he nipped along the river with ease, and I felt suitably humbled as I followed along in his wake. At a track junction he peeled off with a wave, instructing me to carry on straight ahead for Caconda. I was sad to see him go. He rode off into a beautiful sunset strewn across the sky, and I suddenly realised that the rain had stopped, the clouds were clearing, and the sky had turned orangey-pink. Once again, I was exhausted, wet, filthy and riding in the dark, but this time, something told me that the worst was over. A small bar in Caconda, inhabited by a group of enthusiastic, hospitable teenagers,

provided me with the shelter I so desperately need that night. As I lay on a mattress on the floor I studied my next and final day’s ride by candlelight (the electricity was switched off at 10:00 p.m.). Sure enough, I had a whopping day ahead of me if I was to make it to the border by the end of play, but I was determined to do it. In a stupidly masochistic way, I had almost come to relish the challenge of the fiveday Angola dash. I knew this was quite silly but it was a survival mechanism; I had decided to view something that was basically unpleasant as a test of endurance, of both woman and machine, with the ultimate idea being the sense of achievement by the end of it, even if I had almost killed myself in the process. But in truth, what I really wanted to do was to stay here for ages, to explore the country at my leisure and mingle with the Angolan people, who had touched my heart like no other. I would come back one day, when Angola’s Big Men woke up and recognised the immense economic power that a few tourist visas could bring. But would that spoil it, I wondered? I didn’t want to be one of those snooty traveller types who trot around the world complaining that tourism has ruined everything, too smug and self-absorbed to realise that they are, in fact, talking about themselves. But could it be that Angola’s charm lay in the fact that the backpackers and the gap-year kids had not yet carved a path through this land. And if so, did it mean that by coming here I was part of Angola’s solution, or the beginning of a new problem? I wasn’t sure, but I did know that I would be back, one day. My clothes and belongings were showing the strain of the ride, and the next morning I patched up my shredded waterproofs, glued the sole back on my right boot, and tightened up various nuts and bolts that had shaken loose on the bike. The rain returned to see me on my way, but over the course of the morning the sky changed from black to grey and eventually to a heavenly pale blue. The mud dried out into hard red crusts and the earth became dry and sandy, the trees and grass turned yel-

Overland Journal Summer 2009

low and sparse, and for the first time in days I felt the sun on my face, and my boots and socks began to dry out. Here was the proof that my trials were nearly over; I was heading towards dry, dusty Namibia with its red sand dunes and empty desert plains. In that wonderful way the equator works as the earth’s geographical mirror, I was seeing the real time reflection of my northern hemisphere journey as I moved further south, and there was something satisfying about this unshakeable neatness and symmetry on this most chaotic of continents. I could hardly allow myself to think that I would make it to the Namibian border, but sub-consciously the idea that the end might be in sight was driving me on, and I rode as fast as I dared, wincing as my bike slammed in and out of the endless potholes, but hardly caring any more. I was de-mob, end-of-term happy, and despite the fact that every muscle in my body was crying out for rest I rode without stopping until lunchtime, where a small town brought the sweetest reward in the shape of a pasteleria, a Portuguese-style cake shop stuffed with temptation: sticky custard tarts, cream cakes, and all sorts of mouth-watering pastries piled up into towering, calorific pyramids in the window. You could almost forgive the Portuguese for dumping the Angolans if this was their legacy. I replaced five days of lost blood sugar in five minutes, and continued onwards in fine spirits. 40

Overland Journal Summer 2009

By mid-afternoon, my sugar rush had worn off and, knowing that the end was in sight, I became overwhelmed with such deep exhaustion that it was only the endless jolting that kept me from falling asleep. When the road finally fizzled out at the Namibian frontier, I could hardly believe it was happening. Like weary desert travellers see mirages of oases and palm trees, I wondered in my dreamlike state if this border post was my imagination playing tricks on me. But no, it was all breezeblocks, barriers, and barbed wire; the very real stuff of African border crossings. The various offices were in a fenced-off compound, and before I rode inside I used up the last of my Kwanzas to buy a bunch of bananas from a group of women sitting on the ground, selling fruit and vegetables outside the gate. When I climbed off the bike my legs almost buckled beneath me, but I just managed to croak out a weary greeting in Portuguese as I handed over my last couple of notes. I stuffed the bananas in my top box and went to push the bike through the gate. I was already thinking about the tedious tide of bureaucracy that was about to engulf me, and I was only vaguely aware of the high-pitched screeching behind me. “Amiga! Amiga!” came the voices, but I continued on towards the immigration building, distracted by thoughts of more African red tape.

“Amiga! Amiga!” It kept on coming, a chorus of women’s voices, but I took no notice until I felt a bony hand on my shoulder. I turned round to see the women who had sold me my bananas waving money at me and gabbling in Portuguese. I assumed I had underpaid them, so I scrabbled around in my pocket for any extra coins or notes, but their waving and screeching intensified. “Nao!” they laughed, shaking their heads, “Nao!” one of them crouched down on the ground and drew numbers in the dust with a stick. When she stood up and shoved a handful of notes and coins in my hand, I suddenly realised what they were trying to tell me. Addled with tiredness, and baffled once again by foreign currency, I had overpaid for my bananas. And they had chased after me to point out my mistake and give me my change. These kind-hearted, honest women were my final, lasting memory of Angola, and their screeching chorus of “Amiga!” was its most fitting swan song.

Read more of Lois's adventure at loisontheloose.com

Photo by Sinuhe Xavier

Road to Recovery Overland Journal looks beyond the yellow tow strap at the world’s best vehicle recovery kits Story by Scott Brady Photography by Charlie Nordstrom and Scott Brady Overland Journal Summer 2009

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This was supposed to be the dry season, but the mud in the Petén region of Guatemala was deep and unrelenting. Heavy vegetation blocked forward vision—a year of rain and growth had nearly cut off access to the Mayan city of Holmul. Just finding the start of the track had been difficult, and once we were committed to that tunnel of jungle and mud, there was virtually no way to turn back. Within minutes, the first truck was stuck. The suction created by the organic mass of water, debris, and sodden earth caused the winch to strain as it fought to pull the Range Rover free. It was already dark, but we had a plan, we were prepared—luck favors the prepared—and we also had proper recovery equipment with us.

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Understanding equipment rating and load matching The greatest challenge when evaluating the rated working limit of a piece of recovery equipment, and matching it properly to the anticipated load forces, is the complete lack of standardization for recovery equipment in the 4WD market. Uniform standards for equipment ratings exist in the rigging industry, and some of those components are used in vehicle recovery kits, but navigating the various terms is difficult. Here are some guidelines:

Minimum Breaking Strength (MBS): Minimum breaking

strength is determined by taking a sample set of a component and testing the entire sample set to failure—typically using the ASTM (American Society for Testing and Materials) standard 4268. The sample that fails at the lowest strain determines the MBS. It is typical for straps and ropes to be labeled with their MBS, though straps may be listed with “minimum breaking strain” or “never exceed” values.

Working Load Limit (WLL):

WLL is the maximum intended load for the component in normal service. This term was born from the rigging industry for overhead operations, and is intentionally conservative—some components have a minimum breaking strength rating of four or even six times the WLL. For example, a 19mm shackle (such as those available from Van Beest) with a WLL of 4.75 metric tons (10,471 pounds), and a safety factor of 6X, would have an MBS of 62,862 pounds. Load matching is often overlooked by recovery kit manufactures, especially when a pulley block is included with the kit. The recovery strap should be rated to three times the anticipated load (i.e., not just the weight of your vehicle, but the weight of the heaviest vehicle in the group). In a double-line winch pull scenario, the pulley block must have a minimum breaking strength of two times the rating of the winch, and the rigging/tree strap and supplied shackles must also be able to operate safely at twice the winch’s capacity. The same applies to winch extensions, which should be selected with an MBS of over two times the winch’s capacity, as the extension is typically used between the pulley block and anchor point. Overland Journal Summer 2009

Be prepared, be safe This is not just legal boilerplate, and although I would love to use accident attorneys as ground anchors, the truth remains: Vehicle recovery is dangerous. Even with proper training, the best equipment, and protective gear, people are injured every year in vehicle recovery operations. However, conducting a safe operation is not that difficult. Here are some requirements:

Preparation: The vehicle should be equipped with recovery equipment that is

within service life and rated to the expected load. All personnel involved in the recovery should be trained and practiced.

Assessment: Identify all the factors that contributed to the vehicle becoming stuck. Is there something you are not seeing, such as a log in front of the axle? Without rushing, determine the most effective and safe recovery plan.

Protection:

Remove all non-essential personnel from the hazard zone, and ensure that all individuals participating in the recovery are using Proper Protective Equipment (PPE). At a minimum, this includes leather-palmed work gloves, sturdy footwear, and eye protection.

Communication: Advise everyone of the recovery plan, and review hand sig-

nals. Even those not participating will appreciate the insight, which will help keep errant children from trying to play jump rope with a loaded winch line.

Contents of a proper recovery kit (with a vehicle-mounted winch)

• Two D-shackles (three preferred) • 30’ kinetic recovery strap or rope • 10’ rigging / tree strap • Pulley block rated to twice the winch’s capacity • Line damper • Full-size D- or T-handled spade shovel

Suggested additions:

• 20’ rigging strap • 50-75’ winch line extension • Pull-Pal • Second pulley block

Straps and Ropes This might be a tough habit to break, but never conduct a vehicle-to-vehicle recovery with a tow strap. A true tow strap is only used for flat-towing a disabled vehicle off the trail and to a meeting point with a tow truck. A proper tow strap is constructed from polyester, which has minimal stretch. Additionally, the tow strap will have a means of automatically adjusting its length to prevent the strap from dragging on the trail or road. This is most often accomplished with a bungee cord sewn inside the polyester webbing. It is not designed to be used to extract a stuck vehicle.

Overland Journal Summer 2009

The proper implement for vehicle-to-vehicle recovery is a kinetic recovery strap or rope. Kinetic straps and ropes are constructed from woven nylon, which allows for stretch in the range of 20 to 35 percent. A kinetic recovery rope must never be used in rigging a winching operation. Winching operations are conducted with static rigging, while vehicle-to-vehicle recoveries are accomplished with dynamic recovery straps. By using a kinetic recovery strap to extend the length of a winch rigging, the energy generated by the winch will be absorbed in the strap, increasing the energy stored in the rigging. If any component of the rigging fails, the recovery strap will act as a slingshot. For proper extension of winch rigging, a static rope or strap is used. Most popular is a section of synthetic winch rope with thimbles on each end, but other companies are now also producing polyester extension straps. The advantage of rope over a strap is that a rope can run through a pulley block for the length between the thimbles.

Tree Protector Tree protectors should really be called rigging straps, since they can be used around rocks as well as trees. Rigging straps are used like climbing webbing—the goal is to create a secure rigging anchor to which a winch line or pulley can be connected. Rigging straps are constructed from polyester or Dyneema. When used on a live tree, the primary function of the rigging strap is to protect the vascular cambium beneath the bark, so the strap should be wide and flexible.

Winch Rigging Components Winch rigging components include high-quality, screw-pin D-shackles for connection points, and a pulley block for changing the direction of a pull or rigging a double-line pull. Also essential is a method of damping a loaded winch line, which is accomplished by using a line damper with weight (mass) to help direct the path of a broken line to the ground and to act as a parachute, slowing the broken line down as it travels through the air. (See the winching article in the Spring, 2009 issue of Overland Journal.)

Additional Equipment

Shovel

- A shovel can be critical in reducing the strain associated with recovery, since you can remove material dragging on frame components, reduce the angle of exit from holes the tires have dug, etc. I don’t recommend the small, folding shovels for recovery. Buy a high-quality fiberglass or ash-handled shovel.

Chain - Technology has marched on and made chain nearly obsolete in recovery op-

erations. The common argument for using a chain is its resistance to cuts, abrasion, and heat. However, new rigging straps are now available, such as the double-sleeved units from Viking, which start with a 7/16-inch AmSteel Blue winch line, enclosed in a polyester jacket within a nylon sleeve. They are a quarter the weight of chain, and stronger. Chains mar rock and damage trees, and are hazardous should the rigging fail. Think of it this way: When was the last time you saw a rock climber use chains? They use webbing, and for good reason.

Transit Cluster

- The transit cluster is used in the transportation industry to create a secure connection to a vehicle without proper recovery points. The transit cluster connects to the transit lashing holes of the frame or unibody. This method is not ideal, but may be the only method of secure attchment on some vehicles.

Overland Journal Summer 2009

ARB Recovery Tools $474 as assembled

RB, one of the most respected names in 4WD accessories, has quietly expanded into the recovery equipment market over the last three years, producing a comprehensive range of tools. Although not yet sold in a kit form, ARB recovery gear is available a la carte for consumers to assemble based on their needs. We started with the ARB recovery bag, which is one of the best-designed in the test. It’s constructed from cotton canvas, coated with polyurethane for water-resistance. Two reflective strips on the lid aid locating the bag in the dark, and 66-pound-rated buckles secure it shut. Pockets abound, with an inner sleeve to house ARB’s 24,000-pound nylon recovery strap, 26,500-pound tree strap, and 19,800-pound composite pulley. An outer pocket stores the 17,500-pound winch line extension and vinyl line damper. The sides of the bag incorporate smaller pockets for ARB’s 4.75-ton shackles and a pair of gloves. ARB is so well-known for their other products that it wasn’t until last year that we noticed their recovery equipment. Their deliberate approach proved wise, as nearly every product represents a unique approach to solving recovery challenges. Most notable are their straps, which are the best in the industry. Each strap is color-coded by its intended use, making it easily identifiable in the bag or on the ground. All colors are bright. Each strap is also labeled with the material type and MBS, is built with reinforced eyes, and has double wear sleeves to protect the straps from sharp corners and abrasion. arbusa.com, 800-293-9083

Pros:

• The best straps in the industry • Strong, lightweight pulley block • Comprehensive line of high-quality components • Excellent bag design and quality

Cons:

• The winch extension is a strap, which can limit rigging options

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KIT CONTENTS

• Recovery bag • 30’ x 3” recovery strap: 24,000 pound MBS • 10’ x 3 1/8” tree protector: 26,500 pound MBS • 66’ x 3 1/8” winch extension: 17,500 pound MBS • 4 1/3” pulley block: 19,800 pound MBS • ¾” D-shackles (2): 36,000 pound MBS (4.5 ton WLL) • Vinyl recovery damper (Note: ARB gloves were not sourced for this kit, although they are available.)

Overland Journal Summer 2009

Warn Heavy-Duty Winching Accessory Kit $460

ecovery has been Warn’s business since 1948, so it’s no surprise that the company’s heavy-duty winching accessory kit provides a good foundation for recovery operations. The bag is constructed from Cordura nylon, and is specifically designed for the contents of this kit: the straps, pulley, gloves, chain and D-shackle all fit in specific pockets. Unfortunately, Warn has changed the bag color from the highly visible and classic Warn red to a woodland camouflage. While I am sure this will appeal to fans of camouflaged seat covers, etc., it makes the bag difficult to spot during field operations. The kit includes quality components, starting with the best pulley block of this group. The block has a minimum breaking strength of 24,000 pounds, and the steel pulley rolls on greaseable bearings. The end of the pulley is designed as the strap connection point, and includes a line guard—no separate D-shackle needed. Because of this integrated connection point, the kit only includes one 4.75-ton screw-pin D-shackle. The construction of this shackle is notably less refined than those in the other kits, with an unfinished appearance and a loose-fitting pin. The two straps are high-visibility yellow and are labeled with breaking strength ratings. The ends are folded, stitched and reinforced. Of note is Warn’s tree strap, the widest in the test at a full four inches; it will do an excellent job of protecting the tree. A 10-foot, 5/16-inch choker chain is included in the kit, and stowed in a reinforced pocket of the bag. The kit also includes a pair of soft, comfortable, leather-palmed gloves with safety cuffs. warn.com, 800-910-1122

Pros: 46

• Best pulley in the test, rated to 24,000 lbs. • Wide tree protector limits bark damage • Lightweight and compact kit

Cons:

• Poor D-shackle pin thread tolerance and casting quality • Tree strap is a little short at eight feet • A second D-shackle should be included for vehicle-to-vehicle recovery • Camouflage bag not appropriate for field use

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KIT CONTENTS

• Cordura nylon soft case • 30’ x 3” recovery strap: 21,600 pound MBS • 8’ x 4” tree protector: 26,500 pound MBS • 10’ x 5/16” transport chain: 18,800 MBS (4,700 pound WLL) • 5” pulley block: 24,000 pound MBS • ¾” D-shackle: 36,000 pound MBS (4.5 ton WLL) • Warn gloves

Overland Journal Summer 2009

Extreme Outback Products Recovery Kit $350

xtreme Outback Products has been selling their excellent Black Rat recovery kit for over a decade, and the price has never gone up—in fact, it has gone down, all the while George and his team have been refining the bag and its contents. This kit is perfect for mid-weight expedition trucks such as Tacomas, 4Runners, Jeep Wrangler Unlimited, etc., fitted with an 8,000 pound winch. (Extreme Outback does have kits for larger trucks, even up to EarthRoamer size.) The kit bag is one of the highlights, and the thought that went into it runs deep. Each component is housed in a separate sleeve, and each sleeve is made from vinyl-coated mesh, which allows wet straps to easily dry. The organization makes it immediately obvious if an item is missing. The bag can be emptied and turned upside down over a winch line as a damper, and it also has a big, reflective triangle sewn in the side—brilliant. Extreme Outback gloves are the best in the test; they are immediately comfortable, highly visible, and well-insulated. The screw-pin D-shackles are also highly visible, in the classic Extreme Outback red. Both straps are well constructed; the recovery strap has an integrated bungee loop to keep it tightly rolled when stored. The strap also has a 30-percent stretch factor— helpful in snow, sand, and mud recoveries where maximum kinetic energy is needed. As a bonus, the kit includes a T-handled ratchet strap, to aid reseating a tire on a rim among many other uses. extremeoutback.com, 866-447-7711

Pros:

• Best component organization in the test • Excellent value for a comprehensive kit • High-quality, insulated gloves • Bag can be used as line damper

Cons:

KIT CONTENTS

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• 2” recovery strap might be too light for some vehicles • Pulley is below minimum rating for a 9,000lb. winch

• Ballistic nylon soft case with individual pockets • 30’ x 2” recovery strap: 17,600 pound MBS • 10’ x 3” tree protector: 22,000 pound MBS • 10’ x 5/16” transport chain: 18,800 MBS (4,700 pound WLL) • 5” pulley block: 17,500 pound MBS • ¾” D-Shackles (2): 36,000 pound MBS (4.5 Ton WLL) • Insulated gloves • Ratchet strap

Overland Journal Summer 2009

Viking Off-Road Overland Recovery Kit $750

hor Jonsson from Viking Off-Road set out to build the ultimate recovery kit, and we believe he has done it. Thor and his brother Jon are Icelandic, and spent much of their lives working in extreme conditions in the maritime industries. As you can imagine, after gaining experience with mooring lines on Panamax ships it was an easy transition to designing recovery gear for 4WD vehicles. The Overland kit concentrates on self-sufficiency in the field, primarily for a solo vehicle or small group. For example, the winch line extension and two rigging straps can extend a winch pull by a full 70 feet. The kit also includes a complete winch line repair kit, with a 3/8-inch and 7/16-inch fid, finishing line, tape, scissors and instructions. The 7/8th-inch-diameter recovery rope has a minimum breaking strength of 28,300 pounds, which puts it well into expedition camper territory. A 10-foot and 20-foot rigging rope (also used as a tree protector) is provided, which with the integrated wear sleeves and polyester rope liner cushions the rope against the tree or sharp objects. These rigging ropes can replace chain for all but the most obscure requirements (a situation involving extreme heat, for example). Everything for rigging a winching operation is available, including a 19,800-pound MBS pulley, three 19mm D-shackles, 50-foot line extension, line damper, and shackle bracket. By not including a chain, the kit is in the middle of the pack on weight, but fully comprehensive. Obviously, all this equipment comes at a price, and this kit is aimed at the most serious travelers. However, the included components ensure the greatest degree of preparation, and no part of the kit is unnecessary. It would be just as expensive to compile everything we really need for recovery, and we applaud Viking for doing it. The kit is not without a few grumbles, principally with the lack of load-limit labels on the ropes. The limits are included with the packaging, but after just a few trips I can already see that memory getting fuzzy. I also think the rigging ropes could benefit from a second, movable wear sleeve for protection from sharp objects. These are simple changes, and hopefully items Viking can integrate as a result of this test. vikingoffroad.com, 818-506-9789

Pros:

• The most comprehensive recovery kit available • Excellent load matching for all recovery scenarios • Best D-shackles in the test • Best winch line extension in the test • No quality compromises

Cons:

• The duffel-style bag makes organizing and accessing contents difficult • All lines need tags with MBS (note: MBS is in the packaging) • Tree protector and rigging strap should include movable wear sleeve for cutting hazards

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KIT CONTENTS

• Lightweight duffel-style gear bag • 30’ x 7/8” recovery rope: 28,300 pound MBS • 10’ x 7/16” tree protector: 21,500 pound MBS • 20’ x 7/16” rigging rope: 21,500 pound MPS • 50’ x 7/16” winch line extension: 21,500 pound MBS • 4 1/3” pulley block: 19,800 pound MBS • 19mm D-shackles (3): 62,800 pound MBS (4.75 metric ton WLL with 6x safety factor) • TrueFit leather work gloves • Vinyl line damper • Winch line repair kit • 2” shackle bracket – hitch mount

Overland Journal Summer 2009

Recovery Gear Command Kit $460

ecovery Gear primarily supplies equipment to the U.S. military, and the company’s website reflects a thorough approach to load rating, testing, and specifications. The Command Kit is primarily intended for large SUVs used in firefighting, or by forest agencies. The bag is large, and can accommodate an extra rigging strap or winch line extension. The bag would benefit from some type of reflective tape or piping, although I expect this “tactical” approach is consistent with their clients’ needs. One of the most notable attributes of the Recovery Gear kit is the proper load matching of contents: The chain, pulley, shackles, and tree protector are all rated for use with a 10,000-pound winch. The straps are well-made, and have the best load rating tags of the test, but there are a few issues. The stretch factor of the recovery strap is 11 percent, which is low for most vehicleto-vehicle recovery scenarios, and will result in a lot less accumulation of kinetic energy and more impact to connection points. More serious, however, is the tree protector, which is made from the same nylon as the recovery strap. That makes what should be a static (nil stretch) strap now a dynamic anchor point, greatly increasing the hazards should a connection or component fail during a winching operation. However, the kit is filled with high-quality rigging components, including a 24,000-pound pulley block, three 6.5-ton WLL screw-pin shackles, and the best chain in the test—properly rated for the kit, with an assortment of fittings. recoverygear.com, 888-877-6837

Pros:

• Comprehensive contents • Heavy-duty pulley • Good load matching • Easily located and legible labels on straps • Best chain and chain accessories in the test

Cons:

KIT CONTENTS

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• Tree protector material is inappropriate for application • The bag is high-quality, but generic, which means most kit contents do not fit into the pockets • For civilian use, the bag should be highvisibility or wear reflective tape • With the chain, this kit is heavy at 43 pounds

• Large, open-mouth Cordura nylon duffel bag • 30’ x 3” recovery strap: 21,000 pound MBS 11% stretch • 10’ x 3” tree protector: 21,000 pound MBS • 5” pulley block: 24,000 pound MBS • ¾” D-shackles (3): 65,000 pound MBS (6.5 ton WLL with 5x safety factor) • 3/8” x 10’ transit chain with grab hooks: 26,400 pound MBS (6,600 pound WLL) • Slip hook and clevis hook with safety catch for chain • High-visibility leather-palmed work gloves • 2” shackle bracket – hitch mount

Overland Journal Summer 2009

Conclusions

ecovery kits are best judged by the quality of materials used, the features of each component, and the proper matching of those components within the kit. The selection of Editor’s Choice was not influenced by the highest MBS numbers, as a recovery kit is designed to work within a given load range. While it made sense to test winches to their rated capacity, we found that each of these companies take WLL and MBS quite seriously, since all of them supply the military and commercial rigging clients. All of these products are tested to MBS. As a result, we elected to take the products at their published rating, and spend our energy using these kits in the field, comparing their features and evaluating their function in use. The heavy-duty pulley block included in the Warn and Recovery Gear kits is the best in the test, and the ARB straps are by far the most feature-rich and well-designed. The ARB and Extreme Outback bags are the most useful, and clearly intended for recovery gear. The Dshackles from Viking could serve as wall art, and are so obviously better-designed and manufactured, you nearly forget the price. The Extreme Outback Products kit easily won the Value Award. Buy it, stow it in the back of your Xterra, and you’ll likely never need anything else. This kit is probably the best example I have seen in our testing of the perfect combination of features, price, and quality. For our Editor’s Choice, the decision came down to the ARB kit and the Viking Off-Road kit. Essentially, they both win, since Viking uses many of ARB’s products in assembling its ultimate recovery solution. In the end, remote, self-supported travel requires the greatest level of preparation and only the highest quality components. Viking Off-Road has assembled a comprehensive kit that helps the prepared be a little more lucky.

Adventure Motorcycles 50

Adventure motorcycles are not exempt from the need for a recovery kit. However, the contents can be boiled down to three items: A 50- to 70-foot section of 4mm climbing accessory cord, and two micro pulleys. If your adventure motorcycle becomes mired in mud, or slides down a slope, having this small rigging kit can make the difference between wind in your hair (through the vents in your helmet of course) and a long walk.

{ TIP

Overland Journal Summer 2009

Special Thanks Special thanks to Graham Jackson, Stephanie Brady and Andrew Moore.

Recovery Gear Comparison ARB Winch Kit

Extreme Outback

Recovery Gear

Viking Overland

Warn Heavy-duty

Cost

$474

$350

$460

$750

$460

Weight

36.5 pounds

35 pounds

43.5 pounds

38.5 pounds

32 pounds

Max winch capacity

9,500

8,500

10,500

9,500

12,000

Max GVWR capacity (vehicle)

8,000

5,860

7,000

9,400

7,200

Meets minimum requirements

Yes

No*

Bag construction

Cotton canvas

Ballistic nylon

Cordura nylon

Nylon

Cordura nylon

Bag specifically designed for contents

Yes

Shackle rating

38,000

36,000

65,000

62,800

36,000

Shackle QTY in kit

Pulley rating

19,840

17,500

24,000

19,840

24,000

Recovery strap

30' x 3"

30' x 2"

30' x 3"

30' x 7/8" rope

30' x 3"

Ratings (MBS)

Recovery strap rating

24,000

17,600

21,000

28,300

21,600

Recovery strap elasticity

20%

30%

11%

30%

11%

Rigging strap

3 1/8" x 10'

3" x 10'

7/16" x 10' and 20'

4" x 8'

Rigging strap rating

26,500

22,000

21,000

21,500

26,500

Chain size and length

N/A

5/16" x 10'

3/8" x 10'

N/A

5/16" x 10'

Chain rating

N/A

18,800

26,400

N/A

18,800

Winch extension

66' x 3 1/8"

N/A

50' x 7/16"

N/A

Winch extension rating

17,500

N/A

21,500

N/A

Line damper

Yes

Yes, bag

N/A

Yes

N/A

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* Warn: Tree protector is too short, and kit lacks second shackle

FOOTNOTE

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An ironic thing happened during the recovery kit test. My wife, Stephanie, and I had just completed the recovery gear photo shoot in the Cinders OHV area north of Flagstaff. With thoughts of coffee percolating in our heads we loaded the gear in the Discovery and climbed in. Turned the key over in the ignition. Nothing. Tried again. Nothing. Turns out my faithful Land Rover Discovery decided to stop pumping fuel from the gas tank. Fortunately, it was a beautiful morning and we had cell phone coverage. This led to a call to our good friend Andrew Moore, who lives in the area and owns a very reliable Land Cruiser. Mine was not the first Land Rover he had rescued in recent months. The call went something like this: “Morning, Andrew; boy am I glad you’re home.” “Why? Whose Land Rover has broken down now?” Dramatic pause. “Um . . . mine.” Laughter ensued on the other end of the line, and after Andrew had regained his composure, we worked out the details of where we were stranded. Of course, this all turned out great, as we were able to do a real-life test of the Extreme Outback Products tow rope, which worked perfectly. You can stop grinning now, Andrew . . .

Overland Journal Summer 2009

Lati tude Carved in Stone

6° S Oksana Perkins Overland Journal Summer 2009

Overland Journal Summer 2009

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14° N

Overland Journal Summer 2009

Charlie Nordstrom

34° N Oksana Perkins Overland Journal Summer 2009

14° N

Overland Journal Summer 2009

Stephanie Brady

High Tea

with the I.T.B.P.

A couple takes turns relating their change-of-plan journey into the Himalayas Story and photography by Isaac Taylor and Jennifer Coogan

Basmati terraces along the Ganga south of our Pauri camp.

Overland Journal Summer 2009

We’re just north of Bhapkun,

Our X-trail came to grief at this bridge over the Dhauliganga River, north of Bhapkun.

a speck of a village where the locals live underground. It’s cold here. There’s a narrow metal bridge ahead, high above the rocky Dhauliganga River, which we’re following north from the Ganges toward the Himalayan glaciers, past the highest mountains in India, to the Niti Pass on the border with China. Niti is our target. Heading toward the bridge from downstream, I can see it sags alarmingly under its own weight. The ends appear barely perched on the massive stone piers holding them. It has a halfVictorian, half-army-surplus look. Despite its enormity, the bridge seems both temporary and forgotten, like a ladder lying in an overgrown yard. I think, Some day this bridge is going to collapse and fall into that river and take somebody with it. Then, Oh, nonsense, Isaac. Still, as we approach, I look more closely for evidence of indestructible permanence. Perhaps I shouldn’t have: Bold metal lettering labels the bridge, “Mark II.” Our driver, Vikram—mandatory in the deal with our rented turbodiesel Nissan X-trail— accelerates up the last few meters of gravel slope onto the rickety-looking bridge. Below us, the Dhauliganga races south to feed its Himalayan headwaters into the mighty Ganges—holy goddess Ganga to the 800 million Hindus of India. The front wheels crest the ramp and the suspension unloads briefly, then recompresses— and bang! We catch the exposed lip of steel bridge plating on some low-hanging part of the Nissan. In rapid succession we come to an instant halt, my head hits the ceiling, and we hear terrible noises. After a few stunned seconds, Vikram tries to reverse off the bridge. The exhaust system has been yanked backwards, torquing the engine on its mounts at an unnatural angle, and it sounds like the propshaft or a universal joint is shattered: some metal fist beats rhythmically into our floorpan. We roll backwards in the swirling dust. Just minutes earlier Jenny had remarked how smoothly our journey was going. We hadn’t encountered any Maoist rebels, mudslides, or cattle-jams. Now? Oil pools. Daylight fades.

Overland Journal Summer 2009

Daylight fades

The start Travel-wise, ours is a mixed marriage. My mother is a travel agent, and most of our family vacations were spent at five-star resorts that were courting her business. Isaac had a hippie upbringing. Their family trips were in boats they built themselves, or trucks with holes in the floorboard. Early in our relationship, he described vacations as “bourgeois.” To my mother’s mind, it was as if he’d proclaimed, “There is no God.” So it was a surprise for him to discover on our Hawaiian honeymoon that I didn’t mind jostling around in a Rubicon Unlimited, coasting downhill from the 13,800-foot summit of Mauna Kea volcano, on a near-empty gas tank. In the rain. After dark. Likewise, I was shocked to see he enjoyed fine dining and poolside piña coladas even more than I did. Maybe this marriage would work after all. Fast forward a year: We’ve moved from New York to India for work. For our first anniversary, Isaac dreams of getting “a proper 4WD” and driving into the Himalayas from Manali to Leh. The travel guides warn the drive is “not for the faint of heart” (among which group I count myself a member). But Isaac’s longing for Leh, a legendary Himalayan overland destination, is strong and sincere, and I find myself consenting to his plan.

Connaught Place, New Delhi Jenny and I are meeting Mr. Avinash Kohli, chairman of the India chapter of the Explorers Club, in his Delhi office. Kohli has agreed to help plan our route through the Himalayas. He’s at least twice my age, and has such a reassuring lion-in-winter aura that I swallow my pride and take the alien concept of asking for directions to a whole new level: I hire Kohli to provide a 4WD vehicle and experienced guide for the Ladakh region. We’re headed over Jammu/Kashmir’s high mountain passes, including three of the highest driveable roads in the world. Kohli agrees, but with three caveats. First, none of the vehicles on my wish list—Pajero, Patrol, Discovery, Defender, G-Wagen, or the India-built Force Gurkha—is available on short notice. Second, we have to take a local driver, rather than self-drive. Finally, there are no promises the weather will cooperate long enough to get over the high passes. It’s likely the road to Leh could be shut down while we’re en route—and for Kohli, “customer service” in this situation means keeping customers both happy and alive. In some conditions, a few hours exposure at 20,000 feet could be lethal. I don’t want to go without the right gear, so in 95˚F heat, Jenny and I scour the markets around Delhi for Himalaya-proof clothes and survival gear. Afterwards, we meet Kolhi for dinner at his suburban farmhouse to finalize the details. There, with peacocks patrolling the yard where Kohli once entertained his “great friend Ed Hillary,” he gently lets us down over whiskeys and soda: His contact up north has just phoned to say early snow on the Leh road has left hundreds stranded, the army is trying to rescue them. For this year, anyway, overland to Kashmir through the high Himalayas is impossible. Isaac looks crestfallen, but part of me is relieved. I’m wondering: When is the next flight to Bangkok? I’m already picturing myself on a beach in Phuket. Then Kolhi proposes an alternate destination—to some place called Uttarakhand. He promises this is a land where the mountains make the Rockies pale in comparison. Out come the maps, and we sketch an impromptu itinerary. We’ll follow the Hindu pilgrimage routes along the Ganges, then north into Uttarakhand to the Nanda Devi region (Nanda Devi, at 25,643 feet, is the highest mountain in India), and beyond the mapped roads to the Niti Pass, the gateway to Tibet. We’ll take a 4WD from Kohli’s personal collection, hire a driver native to Uttarakhand, and a guide to sort out our meals and accommodations and handle any negotiations with the police or army. We will attempt to cross the Inner Line, an internal boundary of control before the international borders, some of which India actively disputes with its neighbors. “You’ll love it,” Kohli says. “Nobody goes there.” At dawn our driver, Vikram, picks us up in a 2006 Nissan X-trail. He’s accompanied by our guide, an exotic-looking man who introduces himself as Latong. We had initially balked at Kohli’s suggestion we needed both a driver and a guide. My wariness grows stronger when, 20 minutes into our journey, Latong turns to Isaac and says forthrightly, “Sir! I am a Christian, and an alcoholic!” I worry Isaac will pull the emergency brake. Overland Journal Summer 2009

Latong tells us tales of Nagaland, a tribal region near Burma,

where men were famous headhunters; they’ve never been conquered and only

chose to join the new republic of India after WWII,

No, I’m okay with this. It’s impossible to dislike Latong. As we roll north from India’s capital city, he explains that his family recently threw him out at 40 years of age and demanded he learn how to earn a living. He’d grown up in the far northeastern state of Nagaland, rich by local tribal standards, hunting in the jungle. He’s been sober for eight months. This trip is a part of his recovery process: one day at a time. Latong tells us tales of Nagaland, a tribal region near Burma, where men were famous headhunters; they’ve never been conquered and only chose to join the new republic of India after WWII, because Gandhi asked. He told us about his great-grandfather, who was perhaps the last Naga to take a head, even after the British banned the custom during the Raj period. He went to prison, but the British released him early for good behavior. Latong charmed us the same way his ancestor apparently charmed the Raj. While Latong is recounting his genealogy, I transmit an S.O.S. to my husband through a Morse code of hand squeezes. It goes unanswered. Isaac is enthralled by Latong’s stories of hunting wild boar in the jungle with a .22 Hornet. Then I notice that most of our escort’s right ear is missing. I see the distinct outline of teeth marks on the flesh that remains. Naga men, Latong explains, only like to do one thing on a Friday night, “get drunk and fight.” Did I mention it’s Friday? Crossing the state border from Uttar Pradesh into Uttarakhand (formerly known as Uttaranchal), the Hindu influences grow stronger. Uttarakhand is known as the “Abode of the Gods,” and it isn’t uncommon to see a 100-foot Shiva towering above a village. The region is home to many pilgrimage cities such as Haridwar, Rishikesh and the northern temple towns of Badrimath, Joshimath, and Ukhimath—all on our road ahead. As we reach Haridwar and first glimpse the Ganges, we begin to see robed and barefoot sadhus, religious devotees who forsake all worldly possessions and rely on the kindness of strangers for food and shelter. To view the holy river up close, we scrabble down a ravine and walk past a line of makeshift houses—hardly more than tents. The residents welcome us with their palms joined and heads bowed, saying, “Namaste,” the Sanskrit greeting used all Overland Journal Summer 2009

because Gandhi asked.

over the Indian subcontinent. I doubt the residents of a trailer park on the banks of the Mississippi would offer such a gentle welcome to sight-seeing foreigners walking though their yard. After Rishikesh the scenery turns so dramatic we’re too distracted to wonder where we’ll sleep, but as the sun sets we see a welcoming cluster of lights shining down from the town of Pauri a few kilometers ahead. Then Vikram makes a sudden left turn onto an unmarked path, which quickly deteriorates into a rutted, rocky track with branches scraping the side of the Nissan like fingernails on a chalkboard. In daylight this might have been fun; now, we don’t know what’s going on. A few times Isaac and Latong get out of the X-trail to pack rocks into gaping holes in the steep path. This goes on for a long time. At last we stop in front of an old building, and a solitary figure spiders into the headlights with some kind of weapon in his hand. I look to my husband in our last living moment together. Are we about to be murdered for our pocket money and luggage? The intruder opens the passenger door and without saying a word climbs onto Latong’s lap. It’s just a flashlight. Nobody says a word. A few nervous minutes later, I’m relieved when Vikram burns out the clutch, and Isaac and I abandon the X-trail to proceed on foot. “This is good news,” I tell him. “If they’d wanted to murder us, they would have done it earlier, and spared the clutch.” Whatever relief I feel upon at last reaching shelter is dashed by the musty film that covers every surface of the rambling guesthouse. It seems as though nothing has inhabited the place for ages, save the giant spiders scaling the walls of every room. I don’t complain, because I know any alternative will mean braving the rock-strewn path downhill in the dark. We console ourselves by opening the bottle of J&B which Mr. Kohli had tucked into the Nissan. Latong sets about creating some ambiance. He lights candles and incense, and decapitates some spiders. We talk through the day’s adventures as he prepares our dinner: a chicken that a few hours earlier had been running through the streets in a village above Rishikesh. He serves us on a ragtag collection of old dishes, but I’m too hungry to ponder E.coli, amoebic dysentery, or related conditions; we tear into the chicken, peas, and potatoes with abandon. It’s the most succulent, delicately aromatic poultry I

At Devaprayag the confluence of the rivers Alaknanda and Bhagirathi becomes the Ganges. Opposite, left to right: Bathing at dawn north of Delhi. Shiva at Haridwar. Taking a break south of Haridwar.

Overland Journal Summer 2009

South of Rudraprayag, one alpine villager makes Isaac wait to take her photo until after she’s smoothed her hair, fluffed her scarf, and puckered her lips. She has a zesty laugh, and seems as

beautiful and feisty as a Hollywood starlet—

except for the day’s worth of cow feed she’s carrying on her back.

have ever tasted. Any reservations I had about Latong are put to rest by the first bite. He is some weird and wonderful combination of Genghis Khan and Martha Stewart. The next morning I wake to my husband’s urgent call: “Jen, better get out here.” I expect to find all our luggage missing and the X-trail long gone. Instead, what I see from the other room is my first glimpse of a Himalayan panorama. We come from New England, where our mountains are ancient, rounded, and gentle, covered in a soft blanket of green trees, with calm, inviting roads winding up to their modest summits. The Himalayas, at barely 50 million years of age, are spiky and aggressive adolescents, topped with crusted white snow, awesome and terrifying. Their pull is magnetic, and we are being drawn closer.

Pauri to Joshimath I spend the ride to Joshimath balanced between wonder and dread. The road is impossibly narrow, curved, often bordered by a vertical cliff on one side and a vertical drop on the other. Vikram honks at a blind corner. A second later a chicken truck appears from the opposite direction. Vikram swerves. The chickens don’t. I’m tempted to close my eyes but the sights are too interesting. I see slender women in saris and hard hats pounding at rocks with pickaxes, capable children herding livestock, colorful Hindu shrines hanging precariously over the edge of nothingness. There is no shoulder on this road. There’s no margin for error. Every few minutes, Jen and I see good-humored imperatives from the Border Roads Organization, hand painted onto signs and rock walls in bright yellow: THIS IS HIGHWAY NOT RUNWAY LIFE IS JOURNEY COMPLETE IT IF YOU SLEEP YOUR FAMILY WILL WEEP DRIVING AFTER WHISKY IT IS RISKY DON’T NAG HIM LET HIM DRIVE Overland Journal Summer 2009

Can you imagine how briskly “Don’t Nag Him Let Him Drive” bumper stickers and coffee mugs would sell in gas stations and rest stops around the world? Hello, early retirement. This might be the best sign in the world. Don’t nag him, let him drive? Elsewhere, such a motto might raise my hackles, but it’s hard to take seriously in Uttarakhand, where the women seem to do all the heavy lifting and are no shrinking violets. We see them striding down the same rocky hills we’re driving up, burdened by payloads of hay two or three times their size, or armfuls of firewood collected miles away. Yet they don’t hesitate to smile, wave, and greet us with a cheery “namaste.” If we hop out of our vehicle and gesture with our cameras that we’d like to photograph them, they graciously oblige. South of Rudraprayag, one alpine villager makes Isaac wait to take her photo until after she’s smoothed her hair, fluffed her scarf, and puckered her lips. She has a zesty laugh, and seems as beautiful and feisty as a Hollywood starlet—except for the day’s worth of cow feed she’s carrying on her back. We stop for lunch at a “pure vegetarian” restaurant. The menu is worn and dirty but the food is tasty, and we order second servings of naan, dal makhani and aloo matter. After our meal I step onto the balcony in the back of the restaurant to enjoy the view of the rising Himalayas, and feel a twinge of regret for not eating our meal outdoors like another pair of diners had done. Then I look down, and see something so shocking, I rush inside and whisper to Isaac, “Go tell me what you see out there.” He returns a minute later. “Well, there’s a cow eating a pile of trash. And there’s a young boy crying, mourning over a corpse covered with a blanket. Looks like his father. Maybe he worked here.” The shock of seeing the body makes our lodging at the dreary Dronagiri Hotel, in Joshimath, seem first class in comparison. Not only is all the staff alive, but they seem in reasonably good health. The terraced town of Joshimath clings to the side of the mountain on graduated steps. Like many places in India, it’s a bit ramshackle. Most buildings are in a simultaneous state of construction and destruction, and give the impression they might shear off the mountain and slide down into the river below. But Joshimath defiantly bustles

along, kids march to school in uniforms, cobblers and merchants sit under tarp-roofed shops on the side of the road. Residents make full use of their flat roofs, which they can easily access by jumping down from the roads above, to hang laundry, beat carpets, and shell beans. There are also some decent garages and repair shops, probably the last before China. As soon as we leave town, nature quickly reasserts itself. A hot spring bubbles to our right, and a pair of giant eagles circles to our left on the canyon’s thermals, scanning the valley for a non-vegetarian meal. A few small settlements appear on the terraced hillsides above us, but we’d have to trade our Nissan for a mule train if we want to get up there. The road descends to the river-level for a few kilometers, and we stop for photos, taking pictures with our bare feet plunged in the bracing water. The Dhauliganga is ice cold and turquoise blue. By the time we pass the twisted remains of a wrecked Mahindra jeep, the Himalayan splendor wins me over. I begin to relax. I don’t even hold my breath as we approach the precariously stretched bridge. Nor do I worry when I hear the grinding screech from underneath the car. In fact, I take the opportunity to hop out, snap some pictures and dig into our packed lunch of hard-boiled eggs and cheese sandwiches. Could there be a more scenic setting for a motoring mishap? The river roars far below us. The sun and shadows play on the sheer canyon walls above us. The road ahead curves sharply over a crest, hiding whatever is upstream. We have the entire valley to ourselves for some time, maybe an hour, until I see a solitary figure descending on foot from the north. The young man is a “road cutter” who had been working for the Border Roads Organization near the village of Malari, crushing stone—by hand—to widen the road. He’s sympathetic to our predicament and doesn’t hesitate to get down in the dirt to examine the damage. He offers to run to Bhapkun, the nearby village, to get some tools. Meanwhile, a few cars cross the bridge, and stop to inquire if we need help. One family offers us a three-inch-long section of rusty old hacksaw blade. The men take turns sawing away the exhaust. Hours pass, the sunlight dims, and I begin to wonder what kind of guest accommodations might they have at the nearby underground village. One pair of passersby takes particular interest in our breakdown. The younger man offers to take a turn sawing the exhaust, while the older one supervises our progress. As my husband lies on the ground, with just his legs sticking out from underneath the Nissan, the older man in his limited English commiserates with me. I nod and laugh. He pats my shoulder, a gesture I would hardly notice from such a grandfatherly type back home, but it’s unusually familiar for an Indian. Perhaps customs are different here in the mountains? Then he leans in, puts his other arm around me and squeezes me in an

awkward, sideways hug and plants a wet, sloppy kiss on my cheek. I yelp and duck out of his grasp. Isaac shimmies out from under the car to see the cause for my exclamation. I signal with a wide-eyed expression, “Grandpa here just crossed the line!” Latong, unaware, is concerned we may have to spend the night on the bridge. He proposes a plan: the nice old man will drive me back to the hotel, four hours south in Joshimath, while the men stay behind to use the remaining sunlight to finish fixing the car. When I tell him why I don’t think that would be such a good idea, all that Naga headhunter blood rushes to his head and his ears turn bright red. “I’ll kill him!” he seethes. Isaac assures Latong that that isn’t necessary. I explain that while we appreciate his loyalty, the roadside vengeance would actually detract from, rather than add to, our vacation experience, and could open up a whole host of bureaucratic problems. Latong grudgingly agrees, although I’m sure his great-grandfather is sorely disappointed. Eventually we get the Nissan moving. It isn’t pretty, but we start limping south back towards Joshimath, where there should be garages with tools, jacks or a pit, and lights. The hotel there, which last night seemed grim, now sounds great—charming even—compared to sleeping on a gravel road with my wife on the night of our first anniversary. We stop at a few small villages for chai and more field repairs. Jen meets the locals (she can talk to anyone, and has picked up some Hindi), and we get some great photos of the local children. It’s been a long day, she’s tired and nervous about breaking down again, but she’s bopping along like a star. We’re traveling at half speed now, the exhaust and propshaft both literally wired together. The downpipe had been fouling the universal. Cutting off the muffler allowed the surprisingly elastic exhaust system to relax, and relieve the tension that rotated the engine far enough on its mounts to spring oil leaks—luckily minor. We get more comfortable Left to right: Official warning to backseat drivers, courtesy of the Border Roads Organization. This friendly young woman was collecting food for her family's livestock in the alpine valleys between Pauri and Srinigar. No room for road rage here—every time we encounter another vehicle, it requires patience and courtesy to get past. Latong displayed his faith and creativity at Bhapkun. Women in Uttarakhand work just as hard as the men, if not harder, all while maintaining their femininity. Many Himalayan villages are accessible only on foot or by mule; it might take hours to hike from this village to the nearest bridge across the river Alaknanda, and back up to where we took this photo. Overland Journal Summer 2009

Approaching Chopta, elevation 8,858 feet. The road south of Ukhimath features nearrainforest microclimates, with spectacular cliffside vistas shrouded in fog. Overland Journal Summer 2009

Overland Journal Summer 2009

with the recurring scraping and clunking, and pick up speed. We return to Joshimath 16 hours after we left, a day behind schedule. Realistically, our trip is probably over. Still, it was a great day: we feel alive, triumphant, and married.

Joshimath to Gamshali

Vikram pulls a rabbit out of his hat: The local mechanics have the Nissan patched up by noon the next day. We’re on the go. Still, I’ve learned the lesson and won’t risk another breakdown alone on the road—who knows how much rougher it gets farther north? I ask Vikram and Latong to hire a “mountain taxi” by the day to convoy with us. We redistribute our gear, gaining an inch or more ground clearance for the low-slung X-trail. Best $100 I ever spent? The day’s drive north past Tapovan, Bhapkun, and Malari and on to Gamshali goes smoothly, and we arrive around sunset at the most spectacular place I’ve ever seen. The sun sets over the cliff walls as we approach the village of Gamshali. A shepherd dog heralds our arrival and runs just ahead of us as we drive down the winding road lined by a stone wall. A shiver runs down my spine as I get my first peek at our destination. It’s hard to believe people carve out an existence in such a rugged place. The village is like a maze, with winding foot paths climbing up and down. The houses are constructed of simple stone, but ornamented with hand-carved wooden balconies. The only trace of modern civilization is a payphone at the base of the village, and a single solar-powered streetlight in the village square. Our accommodation is a rustic room with a stone floor and two wooden twin beds. Shelves are carved into the wall. A jumble of old blankets, quilts, and tapestries has been set out for us to help us survive our first night in the Himalayas without any electricity. Isaac and I set a campfire in the empty square to make some tea. Soon two inspectors from the India-Tibet Border Police catch word of our arrival, and join us. The I.T.B.P. barracks are just outside Gamshali, and they’re here to guard against China. Tourists are rare. We offer them some tea, try to communicate for a while, and they invite us to join them for breakfast the next morning. Afterwards, sitting alone by the fire, we hear a faint, high-pitched sing-song muttering coming from the labyrinthine network of passageways. Out of the shadows shuffles a small woman, her eyes magnified by a powerful pair of glasses. She’s bundled in the traditional costume of the region, and bearing a tray of food. She greets us matter-of-factly, chattering in Hindi as if we understand. The best we can discern from her broad, sweeping gestures toward the sky and the mountain behind her and the look of beaming pride on her face is that she is telling us about Gamshali. I wonder, has she seen us sitting by the fire from her own house, or had news spread through the village that foreign visitors had arrived? Either way, she’s found out Overland Journal Summer 2009

about us and decided to offer us her hospitality. We eat the fried pakoras, redolent of radish and onion. They’re tasty. We eat our anniversary dinner on a plastic table set up in the square, where Gamshali holds its ceremonies and gatherings. The solar-powered light shines down on us, illuminating the feast Latong has prepared. Afterwards we retire to the dwindling campfire for a digestif—a J&B, of course. In the morning, we head down to breakfast with the I.T.B.P inspectors. We sit with them on their cots in their barracks, eating flat bread and drinking sweetened chai. We explain that we want to get as close as possible to Tibet, not to make trouble or pass through to China, but for the adventure—to explore their wonderful country to its very edges. Sensitive border areas are off-limits to foreigners, unless they have Inner Line permits from the government, which we do not. But we apparently make a good impression at the breakfast test, taking second helpings of chai and roti. Eventually the senior man says “Okay, we trust you.” They promise to radio ahead to their counterparts at the forward base in the Niti Pass, advising them we’re coming. They escort us out to the road, and in a last-minute nod to procedure, they have us sign a hand-ruled log. It looks no more official than a bed and breakfast guest book. Then we’re allowed to pass into the no-man’s land beyond the checkpoint.

Gamshali to the Niti Pass The hair-raising drive to Niti shaves a few years off my life. We leave the Nissan behind and all cram into the high-clearance Mahindra Maxx. The steady and mature Vikram now sits on the passenger side, jammed up against Latong, while the cavalier 18-year-old co-owner of the Mahindra mans the wheel. He laughs at each hairpin turn, joking with his younger companion, who is straddling the gearshift lever. When we arrive in Niti, another picturesque village overlooking a valley that brings to mind Shangri La, we inquire with a local where to find the border check post. He gestures up to the mountain towering thousands of feet above us. “Just walk up there and turn left, you can’t miss it.” Like a New Yorker who sits in the coffee shop while his out-of-town guests take the ferry to the Statue of Liberty, Vikram and the Mahindra boys opt to snooze in the vehicle while we strike out towards our ultimate destination. Latong leads the way up the mountain, and Isaac and I follow together up the faint path. An hour later Jenny and I have climbed a brutally steep mile or so, huffing and puffing up a four-foot-wide path tracing around the mountainside, in and out of shadowy ravines overlooking sheer drops. Now I really appreciate why some consider mules the ultimate backcountry vehicle. Jenny and I stop to catch our breath every few minutes. We’re sweating buckets despite having ascended high enough that it’s very cold in the shade. We’re also both getting sunburned; at this elevation the sun is fierce. Our self-confidence wanes. Then, from across a ravine far to the

Looking down on Niti village from the border patrol station, about 15 km from the Tibet/China border. The glacial stream feeds into the Dhauliganga river. Opposite, left to right: I.T.B.P. officer at Niti Pass. In the final push to Niti, Vikram leaves the driving to the young man from Joshimath whose sturdy Mahindra Maxx we hired in Joshimath; Latong, our Naga fixer, sits in the center seat. The Indian-Tibet Border Police barracks outside Gamshali village.

Overland Journal Summer 2009

Stone walls and pastures in Gamshali, an unmapped village off the grid just south of Journal the TibetSummer border.2009 Overland

north, we see an old man with a bundle of wood on his back approaching down the path. It’s 10 minutes before we cross paths, and the wizened villager explains we must go higher still to reach the military post. We’ve missed some hidden turn. We clamber directly up the Himalayan fall-line. We use a rushing bouldered stream as our staircase: It’s wet, it’s cold, and it’s so steep you can reach out and hold onto the ground in front of you at waist level. We’re almost ready to hit the “abort” button, until we notice Latong, the pack-a-day smoker and recovering alcoholic, scrambling up the mountain with verve. He’s an inspiration: one foot in front of the other. A problem arises: Our misnavigation has looped us around under the Indian military’s forward position on the China/Tibet border. We’re now coming back south towards armed men—from out of the NoMan’s Land they are here to patrol—and are climbing toward their foxholes from below, out of their view. It’s a risky situation: Latong speaks Hindi, but not well, and he looks Chinese. He disappears “over the top” and we follow behind. The I.T.B.P. position comes into view—and the foxholes are empty. The post is a series of simple, unassuming buildings, distinguished by a few radio antennae. Now there are soldiers hurrying toward us . . . carrying folding chairs, and water, and cups of tea. India is an incredible country. You would think the soldiers would be suspicious, but we receive the same warm welcome we got everywhere else in Uttarakhand: sincere, smiling namastes all around. They serve us tea, coffee, and snacks, and insist that we stay for lunch after our long trek. It’s almost as if an Italian grandmother is in command of the outpost.

The officer in charge joins us. He kindly grants our request for a photo and holds up his dainty, floral teacup. Then he looks back to the gun positions behind him, and says, “No, not here. For security, it’s not permitted. Besides, it’s more beautiful here.” And he shifts in front of a spectacular snow-capped panorama. We take his portrait. He hands his teacup to one of his constables and signals for Isaac to join him in a photo. They talk about the mountains, their tops covered in snow, that form a sheer wall before our eyes. “These are 15,000 to 16,000 feet tall,” the officer says. My husband points to some playful crows dancing and sliding sideways in the gusting mountain winds. “Chinese crows,” one young officer explains. “They like to fly, very much.” They will be the only ones to cross the frontier today. We can go no farther, and we’re lucky to have gotten as far as we have. Back in Delhi, we had spotted the Niti Pass in our atlas and I imagined a remote, but official border post, like the one in Van Buren, Maine, at the end of U.S. Route 1, where warmly-dressed officials check your papers and wave you into Canada. But the name is misleading. It may as well be the Niti Impassable. There’s no road that leads there, just that one skinny footpath winding north up the ravine. Even if we managed to charm our hosts into letting us go farther, it was unlikely their Chinese counterparts would be boiling water for tea to welcome us. We thanked them and turned back to the village, satisfied with how far we managed to get. We were well into the blank space on even our best-detailed map of the state and at least a two-day drive from the nearest hotel. And that’s a three-star. My mother would be horrified. Her son-in-law is happy.

Trip planning The easiest way to get close to the India-Tibet border is to go through an outfitter who can provide the vehicle and driver and, most importantly, arrange the inner-line permit. Don’t underestimate the benefit of having a fixer who can help you deal with the many unexpected roadblocks that are a fact of life in remote Indian travel.

Resources

Bangalore-based outfitter Getoff Ur Ass offers several different adventurethemed camping and trekking tours in Uttarakhand and beyond. +91-80 26722750, getoffurass.com Amber Tours in Delhi, has connections in the Uttarakhand region and can arrange for accommodation in some off-the-map Himalayan villages. +91112373 6523, ambertoursntravels.com Check out India’s top online travel site, for cheap train, air, and bus fares. You can also buy tickets in person at one of their offices in any major Indian city. makemytrip.com The state-run GMVN tourism corporation runs its own tourist bungalows and huts throughout the region. It also rents camping equipment and coldweather clothing. gmvnl.com

Helpful tips

To do it yourself, you can either hire a vehicle in Delhi, or save time by starting your drive from Uttarakhand’s capital, Dehradun (a 45-minute flight from Delhi). Imported 4WD vehicles are rare and expensive in India. The Mahin-

dra Scorpio, Tata Sumo, and Force Trax Gurka are all domestic models that can get the job done. Tailor your activities to the time of year: there are plenty of special activities in the region, depending on the time of the season. Try rafting on the Ganges near Rishikesh September to November and March to May; go skiing at Auli between late-December and March; trek to the Valley of Flowers between mid-July to mid-August to see the national park in full bloom. Head to the south of the state in April or May for the best chances of spotting a tiger at Jim Corbett National Park. Eicher publishes the best maps of the Uttarakhand region. They’re available in most Indian bookstores. Past Joshimath, few people speak English, so it helps to have a Hindi translator in tow. At the very least, bring a decent Hindi-English phrasebook. Knowing just a few words (especially anything having to do with food) can lead to a meaningful encounter with the locals. Rent a few Bollywood flicks and familiarize yourself with some of the biggest stars before you go and you’ll have a guaranteed conversation starter, even in the most remote areas. Stock up on small bills (10-, 20- and 50-rupee notes) at a major bank before you head deep into Uttarakhand. Food and goods are cheap and most merchants will say they have no change if you try to pay with a 500-rupee note. Keep some coins and a phone card handy, as cellular coverage gets patchy in the mountains.

Overland Journal Summer 2009

Uttarakhand

Route

Cartography by David Madeiros (mapbliss.com)

CHINA

NI T I PA S S

CHADIGARH

NITI

RUDRAPRAYAG PAURI HARIDWAR

NEPAL 70

NEW DELHI

GURGAON

Map area

I Overland Journal Summer 2009

KANPUR

Have Blade, Will Travel The only good knife is the one with you By Jonathan Hanson

Overland Journal Summer 2009

o one carries fixed-blade sheath knives any more. And that’s a shame. If you need a knife—that is, a real knife, and not something that’s also a corkscrew or a flash drive—nothing can touch a full-tang, fixedblade knife for strength, versatility, and safety. Sadly, social mores have changed such that, today, appearing in public with a sheath knife anywhere outside Cody, Wyoming, is liable to earn you raised eyebrows, if not a call to Homeland Security. A friend of an acquaintance was accosted in a boutique west-coast pastry shop by someone who asked what he was “doing with that weapon in here.” He claims to have replied, gravely, “Ma’am, you should hear what the voices in my head keep telling me to do with it.” In any case, when a fixed-blade knife is un-PC or simply inconvenient to carry (they can be awkward while driving, and are hard on the upholstery, for example), a good folding knife is the next best thing. No folding knife is as strong as a fixed-blade knife, all else being equal, but modern pivot and locking devices have made folders plenty enough for most tasks, up to and including field-dressing a large game animal, splitting kindling, or virtually any other camp chore.

What to look for Length—The design parameters of most folding knives, which generally mandate that they fit comfortably into a trousers pocket, happily result in a blade length ideal for most use—around three to three and a half, perhaps four inches. Much longer than this and you lose fine tip control and reduce rigidity of the pivot through simple leverage.

Lock—All good folding knives employ a locking mechanism to ensure the blade doesn’t close on your fingers under use. These range from the simple and effective Walker liner lock—a flat spring that snaps sideways behind the blade to lock it open, visible in the slot where the blade folds—to designs that use a sliding crosspin to engage a detent in the blade, such as Benchmade’s excellent Axis, to several other systems. A blade lock should snap into place with authority, allow very little or no play, and not fail if you push down hard with the back of the blade on the edge of a table (need I caution you to be careful how you do this?). A good lock is extremely strong—the Axis system is reputed to withstand 200 pounds of negative pressure. Overland Journal Summer 2009

Scales—The slabs attached to either side of the handle, and which comprise most of the gripping surface—range from totally absent to exotic. On some knives the liner of the handle itself serves as the grip. Other knives use plastic scales, or fiber-reinforced nylon, or metal such as aluminum or titanium. Micarta—layers of linen cloth embedded in epoxy—has been for decades an elegant and durable scale material; the 21st century equivalent is G10, made from fiberglass cloth soaked in resin, then compressed and baked. From there, the sky is the limit if you look at custom makers: stag, exotic woods, fossil mammoth ivory, you name it. On a working knife you don’t want to worry about oil or sweat or blood damaging the scales; fortunately for fashionistas even the exotic materials hold up well if properly sealed.

It’s all about the steel But in the end a knife is all about the blade, and that means it’s all about the steel. Plain steel is simply iron with some carbon in it. But modern steel knife blades are alloys (blends) that incorporate additional elements, including chromium, molybdenum, vanadium, tungsten, manganese, and nickel. The proportions of these elements in the steel—in addition to other factors, particularly the forging process and heat treatment employed by the maker—determine the properties and quality of the blade. Sometimes a fraction of a percentage point difference in one element will substantially alter the properties of the steel. One obvious quality of steel, hardness, is commonly measured by the Rockwell scale. The Rockwell test for knife steels employs a 300-pound-plus weight that presses a sharp diamond cone into the material. The depth to which the cone penetrates the surface reveals the hardness of the material (on older Puma knives every product was subjected to this test, and the resulting tiny crater in the steel proudly indicated with a sticker). So far, so good. Obviously, the harder the steel the stronger, and the better it will hold an edge, right? Simply buy a knife made from the hardest steel you can find. Done. Not so fast. As steel becomes harder, it also frequently becomes more brittle, and this can make a fine edge—indeed the entire blade— susceptible to bending or impact forces. An extreme example of this can be found in ceramic knives—not steel at all of course, but sintered zirconium oxide or zirconium carbide. Ceramic knives, which display

a Rockwell hardness of around 75 (compared to the Rc58 to Rc60 of an average knife), hold their edges fabulously well, but are relatively fragile: they can chip if torqued when cutting, and can actually break if dropped on a hard floor. A proper knife blade must thus combine several qualities. As described by knife makers:

Wear resistance indicates the resistance of the knife to abrasion. This is largely determined by the density and distribution of carbides (compounds of carbon and other metallic elements) within the finished blade. Toughness describes the ability of the knife to survive impacts or bending without breaking. On the edge this translates to resistance to chipping. Strength is the ability of the knife to resist bending in the first place. This is directly related to the Rockwell hardness. Strength helps prevent microscopic folding of the edge during use, which is perceived by the user as dulling. Edge holding is not the same thing as wear resistance; edge holding ability varies with all of the above properties. Stain resistance is the least important quality of the steel, unless you really like shiny knives. Many stainless blades (which are only stain-resistant) lack the toughness and edge-holding of non-stainless blades. The science of making knife steel revolves around the blending of various alloys to achieve the best possible compromise. It’s easy and cheap to make a steel that holds an edge well or can withstand bending or is easy to sharpen; it’s extremely difficult to make one that displays all those qualities. But modern alloys are resulting in knife blades that are both tougher and stronger than those of just a decade ago.

The art of the blade Once the steel is in the hands of the knifemaker, the art begins, because how the maker forges and heat treats the blade determines how the particular alloy being used will perform in the end product. Heat treating involves successive heating and cooling of the blade, at different temperatures and speeds, sometimes on specific areas of the blade, sometimes immersed in different mediums to control certain aspects of the process. The result is that two knives made from an identical steel alloy can display significantly different performance. In fact, good steel can be ruined with improper heat treating, and the lowliest carbon-steel knife can display awesome performance given careful differential heat treatment. If that’s not confusing enough, recent advances in forging techniques (see the reviews) have made it possible to enhance the qualities of existing alloys far beyond their former limits. There are two other ways to alter or augment the properties of knife steel: laminating and pattern-welding. Laminated blades combine a center and cutting edge of very hard steel with outer layers of softer steel, to give the knife both superior edge-holding and toughness. Pattern-welded steel produces the lovely swirled effect you see on many high-grade knife blades. Commonly, but misleadingly, called Damascus

(which was historically an entirely different process), pattern-welded steel comprises layers of different types of steel, repeatedly heated and folded over to gain a blade that can have hundreds of layers. The original intent of pattern-welded steel was to combine soft iron and brittle carbon steel to combine edge-holding and toughness. With today’s steels this is not necessary; most modern pattern-welded blades are done strictly for effect.

How can you know exactly what you’re getting in a knife blade? Two ways: One is to become a dedicated follower of one of the excellent knifemaking forums, where 30-page threads are devoted to arcane questions of manganese content or the merits of clay-tempering. It’s fun to learn the basics, but after a while your head might start swimming. Much easier is to familiarize yourself with some of the better knife makers and better steels. Obviously, premium steel is more expensive than lower grades, so you can be reasonably sure a knifemaker using high-quality raw material will give it the attention it deserves. I can’t offer anything close to a definitive list here, but stainless steels to look for include CPM S30V, CPM-M4, BG-42, ATS-34, 154-CM, S90V, and 440C. In non-stainless steels, A2, D2, O1, and CPM 3V are all excellent choices. Any of these steels from a high-quality maker will give you a reliable, long-lasting blade that will hold an edge through serious abuse. Be wary of makers who label their steel something vague, such as “400-series stainless,” which could mean anything from the butter-knife 420 to the excellent 440C. If they don’t specify, it’s almost certainly a lower grade. You’ll discover a freely admitted personal prejudice in this lineup: I loathe serrated blades for general use. I think they’ve become a crutch for those who never learned to properly sharpen a knife. It’s true that a fresh serrated blade works better for many slicing cuts than a polished plain edge, but a plain edge is more versatile, clean-cutting, and far easier to resharpen. And the combination plain/serrated blades so common today usually leave too little of either edge to be effective. I carry a fully serrated rescue knife while sea kayaking, but that is an only-use-facing-death tool to be employed for severing line or slicing through clothing. (See the accompanying Edge Pro review for more about sharpening.)

Overland Journal Summer 2009

Buck Folding Alpha Hunter 74

he first fixed-blade knife I ever bought was a Buck, when I realized there was no way I could afford the German-made Puma I really wanted, which cost almost three times as much. The Buck served me well—and my experience pretty much sums up the brand: solid knives at affordable prices. Buck introduced the first commercially successful locking folder, the 110 Folding Hunter, in 1964. It remains one of the most iconic knives ever designed, and has been copied by dozens of makers (including Puma, even before they sullied their reputation with massproduced garbage). Lately, to my consternation, Buck seems to have taken a shotgun approach to knifemaking, trying to please everyone with a catalog so bewildering that I simply quit looking after three or four pages of knives distinguished largely by which Mossy Oak camo pattern they sport on the scales. So it was a pleasure to stumble on this Folding Alpha Hunter (0277RWS-B specifically), which is a good crack at a 21st-century version of the 110. Like that progenitor, it’s a handsome tool as long as you don’t mind a bit of flash. The thick steel of both blade and handle is highly polished, set off by lustrous, resin-impregnated rosewood scales. Underneath is a beefy, solid knife—the heaviest in this group at 7.6 ounces—capable of real work. It’s the most comfortable of the bunch, with a hand-filling grip and no pocket clip to get in the way (a stout leather belt sheath is included). The Alpha’s blade is above serious criticism: good, hollow-ground 154CM stainless, with ambidextrous thumb studs for opening, and grooves on the back of the spine (called “jimping”) for forward conOverland Journal Summer 2009

$114 (USA)

trol. Buck says it’s hardened to Rc59-60. Flip it open (it pivots between smooth bronze washers) and a Walker liner lock snaps into place with a satisfying double click, like a Mauser bolt going home. My example actually locked up tighter than the Benchmade with its much-vaunted Axis lock. The cutting edge is three inches long, with a gradual sweep that facilitates sharpening. The back of the blade retains full thickness to within a half-inch of the tip, to maintain strength. One of the criticisms of the liner lock is that, theoretically, one can inadvertently unlock the blade while grasping the knife firmly, by accidentally pulling the lock tab to the side with a finger. As a left-hander, this was unlikely for me on the Alpha, since a left-handed grip tends to pull the lock farther into engagement. When I had a right-handed friend try to reproduce such a situation deliberately, he had a difficult but not impossible time doing so. A normal grip simply doesn’t shift the index finger far enough to disengage the lock. So—a theoretical problem, unlikely in normal use. I have just two complaints about the Alpha. Due to the thickness of the handle and its wood scales, the thumb studs can be difficult to grip securely for quick opening. This was exacerbated when my hand was wet; I resorted to pinching the studs from either side with thumb and forefinger to get the blade clear of its slot, after which my thumb sufficed to finish. Also, the handle of the Alpha is pinned together, so reassembly after detail stripping to clean and lube the pivot requires tricky, slide-in reorientation of the washers and bolt (at least it’s held in with a standard Torx fitting). Still, I’d be happy to carry this knife for virtually any use. buckknives.com, 800-326-2825

Benchmade 520 Presidio

he Benchmade Presidio is the evil twin of the Buck. The two are within fractions of an inch of each other in length, and similar in shape—but in contrast to the Buck’s smooth warm wood and polished steel, the Presidio is all grippy matt black and satin blade. If you’re the type who’ll trade out a perfectly good set of factory alloy wheels on a Discovery or Land Cruiser for black steel rims, this is your knife. Benchmade has a reputation for building production knives that feel like custom knives, and the 520 (designed by well-known custom maker Mel Pardue) reinforces that. The opening action is so smooth and light, it feels like some besmocked apprentice in a musty workshop hand-lapped and polished the mechanism for hours. It’s not a fluke— every Benchmade knife I’ve used feels exactly the same. Partial credit goes to the patented Axis system, which employs a horizontal sliding bar that engages a ramp on the back of the blade when open, resulting in a lockup that would take tremendous force to defeat with reverse pressure, yet offers minimal resistance to pivoting as you swing the blade open with either ambidextrous thumb stud. There’s virtually no chance of accidentally disengaging the lock during normal use. Lowfriction (and non-galling) bronze washers should maintain that smooth feel for decades. Bladewise, the Presidio sticks with a simple drop point—probably the most all-around useful shape—in very fine if not exceptional 154CM stainless hardened to Rc58-60, and an all-around perfect 3.3 inches in length. A false edge on top reduces weight a fraction while

$160 (USA)

diminishing strength very little. The gentle curve is easy to sharpen, unlike blades with katana-esque corners or other tactical-but-impractical shapes. Its flat grind seemed to slice a little better than the Buck’s hollow grind, probably putting the Presidio’s blade at the top of this heap for versatility. The handle comprises 420J steel liners and black-anodized, 6061 T-6 aluminum scales (which help keep weight down to 5.6 ounces). The texture is sort of a grainy satin that feels secure in the hand. That feel is significantly enhanced by the raised, edged ribs that run along each side, and the swells at the top and bottom of the front of the handle, which form rudimentary quillions. The result is that this knife is less likely to slide out of your grip than any other knife in the review. If I had to repeatedly stab something, this is the knife I’d want to be holding—if that imagery isn’t too alarming. However, while the Presidio has a pocket clip (reversible for us lefties), the combination of a nearly four-inch closed length, grippy texture, and sharp-edged ribs make it a very unfriendly knife to pockets. I removed the clip and now carry the Presidio comfortably in a leather belt sheath. One more warning: The black anodizing on the scales will wear off with only moderate use, especially on high spots. To me this leaves the knife with a very business-like patina, but if you like your knives pristine, you might look at the very similar 551, which has a composite handle (and is thus a bit lighter and less expensive as well). benchmade.com; available from expeditionexchange.com, 310-618-1875

Overland Journal Summer 2009

Fällkniven Tre Kronor 4

ust ignore the “That’s not a knife!” quips of those who think they’re being original when you open this little gem. The Tre Kronor (Three Crowns) 4 comes from Sweden, where the nomadic Sámi people have historically used knives called puukkos, with blades little longer than this one’s 2.6 inches, to accomplish everyday tasks such as, say, field-dressing moose. At a gossamer 1.7 ounces, the TK4 wasn’t even there in my pocket, although it comes with a little Cordura belt pouch (tagged by my wife as “adorable”). The knife’s composite, one-piece handle keeps weight down but provides a durable and comfortable grip (more exotic materials are available, at the cost of slightly increased weight). It even dispenses with quick-opening studs, relying instead on good old-fashioned thumb slits. The lockback design is simple, and more than strong enough for any use this knife is likely to experience. Where the Tre Kronor really shows its mettle is in the crafting of that little blade. With most steels and most forging methods, a knife blade can easily tip over into brittleness if heat treated beyond about 60 on the Rockwell scale. Essentially (and simplistically) this is because steel harder than that gets that way chiefly by virtue of large chunks of carbides in the matrix (“large,” in this case, meaning around 3 microns or bigger). And those big carbide chunks can create fracturing and chipping on a fine edge. Fällkniven gets around this effect in the TK4 by using a material called powdered steel (their trade name is SGPS: Super Gold Powdered Steel). By literally powdering the steel before it’s forged, the carbides are drastically reduced in size. The powdered matrix is then cold-molded under extremely high pressure to the rough form of the Overland Journal Summer 2009

$120 (Sweden)

blade, after which it is subjected to forging-temperature heat. The result is a blade with excellent toughness that can be hardened to R62, a level at which it should hold an edge noticeably longer than knives made from steels in the R58 to R60 range (the Rockwell scale is logarithmic rather than linear). But Fällkniven went beyond this, and sandwiched the powdered steel center between two layers of softer, tougher VG2 stainless steel. You can easily see this laminate line just behind the edge. (Scandinavian knifemakers have been employing laminated blades for decades; powdered steel technology has brought the technique into the 21st century.) The combination—henceforth referred to as 3G steel—gives this little knife cutting power and durability far beyond its Lilliputian proportions. Go to work with it opening boxes or cutting rope (or fielddressing a moose) next to someone with a “Now-that’s-a-knife!” knife made from lower-grade steel, and you’ll still be slicing after Crocodile Dundee is sawing futilely. The locking mechanism of the TK4 is pinned in place in the handle, but the blade is removable via a Torx fitting, should it ever become gummed up (caveat emptor: disassembling most knives will void the factory warranty). As a not-really-relevant aside—unless you’re giving one as a gift—the TK4 comes in a positively elegant double box, a nicer presentation than either of the $300-plus knives on these pages. In the few short weeks I’ve used it, the TK4 is already one of my favorites, and has converted everyone who snickered at first glance. I’m eyeing the 3G version of Fällkniven’s workhorse F1 fixed-blade knife as a big brother. fallkniven.com; available from knifecenter.com, 800-338-6799

DiamondBlade Monarch

he first thing I can tell you about this knife is that it is sharp. You might think, Okay—so? Aren’t all these knives sharp when new? True, but let me explain. Friends and relatives will affirm that I’m a stickler for sharp knives, tiresomely repeating the “A dull knife is a dangerous knife” axiom, wagging my finger at them if I see light glinting off an edge. I don’t own a CATRA sharpness-testing machine, but over the years I think I’ve gotten pretty good at evaluating the keenness of an edge by the rough thumb-feel, arm-hair-shaving, paper-slicing methods. I’ve tried knives that came from the factory exceptionally sharp—the Helle Eggen I wrote about some time ago, and, in this group, the Chris Reeve Sebenza and the little Fällkniven. But let me tell you—the Monarch is scalpel-sharp; atom-splitting sharp. And it’s likely to stay that way for a very long time. Here’s why. DiamondBlade Knives starts with a piece of very strong, nonstainless D2 steel, well-respected among knifemakers. The area that will form the edge of the blade is then subjected to a technique called friction-forging. A rotating grinder head made from Polycrystalline Cubic Boron Nitride (PCBN) penetrates the steel at such high speed and pressure (several thousand pounds) that it creates a very localized forging temperature. The contact instantly plasticizes the steel, and induces microstructure shearing that reduces grain size in the edge far below what’s normally possible—from around 5 microns in normally processed D2 down to around .5 microns. That’s much smaller than even powdered steel can achieve. The result is a highly corrosionresistant edge that displays a phenomenal hardness of around Rc65 to Rc68. Yet because of the localized nature of the friction forging, the

$425 (USA)

spine of the blade remains at a resilient Rc42-45. With an edge at that hardness and a grain structure that fine, a blade can be sharpened at a shallower angle and to a finer polish than most blades while retaining greater transverse load strength—i.e., resistance to chipping or folding—and far higher durability. And that’s what DiamondBlade furnishes right out of the box. So much for the blade. In other respects, the Monarch is a solid if not superlative folding design. The blade pivots open smoothly but somewhat stiffly via a (cleverly diamond-shaped) thumb hole, and is secured with a simple Walker liner lock. The scales are olive drab G10 composite—in my experience an astoundingly tough if fairly flexible material—with very thin steel liners. Side to side rigidity of the open knife is thus noticeably less than on the Benchmade and Buck, for example. The entire handle flexes a bit, rather than just the pivot. The handle also seems oddly large, both visually and by feel— even wearing gloves it was longer than necessary for my average-sized hands, and it could be shortened easily by a half-inch while retaining the same blade length. But it’s comfortable and secure. Thanks in part to the lightweight composite, the Monarch, despite having fractionally the longest blade here (3.4 inches), weighs just 4.6 ounces. And despite its size, it rides well in a pocket (on a non-reversible, optional clip), thanks to rounded edges, although the sharp jimping on the spine of the blade might catch fabric. Details such as the handle size and slight flexibility are just that on the Monarch. As I mentioned in the beginning, a knife is all about the blade, and this knife has a blade that will inspire superlatives every time it’s opened. diamondbladeknives.com, 800-221-6873 Overland Journal Summer 2009

Chris Reeve Small Sebenza

hris Reeve started making knives professionally out of his garage in Durban, South Africa, in 1984. A scant three years later he won the award for best folding knife from the Knifemaker’s Guild of Southern Africa. After he and his wife and business partner, Anne, emigrated to the U.S. in 1989, his reputation here grew just as quickly. Chris introduced the Sebenza (which means “work” in Zulu) in 1991. His intent was to create a folding knife that was very simple and light, yet capable of holding its own against fixed-blade designs. He accomplished this by rejecting any but the best materials, by removing every part that wasn’t essential to strength, function, and comfort, by inventing new ways of solving old problems, and by putting it all together with close tolerances and impeccable craftsmanship. His success in this exercise of functional elegance is apparent in the number of close copies you can find from other makers. The handle of the Sebenza comprises two slabs of light, strong, corrosion-proof (and expensive) 6AL4V titanium—no separate scales and liners needed. Chris liked the simplicity of the Walker liner lock, but not the thin material of most of them—so he designed his own locking system, which he calls an Integral Lock but which is now known generically as a frame lock. Rather than using a separate piece of spring steel, Chris cuts a long L-shaped slot in one of the scales, so that a solid bar of titanium becomes the lock, virtually immune to any kind of compression stress. In addition to the extra rigidity supplied by the frame lock, a recess in the back of the blade bears against a stop pin when open. As a consequence of this and what must be microscopic manufacturing tolerances, the lockup on the Sebenza is, quite simply, rock solid. No Overland Journal Summer 2009

$330 to $400 (USA)

amount of up-and-down or sideways torque I could apply holding it between my hands betrayed that it was anything but a one-piece knife. Exceptional. The first Sebenzas were delivered with blades in ATS34, a very good steel still used by many makers (it’s virtually identical to 154CM). Chris soon upgraded to the excellent BG42, but dreamed of something even better. So he (along with several other makers) collaborated with Crucible Metals in Syracuse, New York to produce a stainless steel known as S30V, which quickly gained fame as a superior blade steel. Formulated using powder metallurgy (see the Fällkniven review), S30V, even at the moderate Rc58-59 hardness used by Reeve, is tough and very wear-resistant—ideal attributes for a working knife. Every Sebenza blade is beautifully hollow-ground by hand. The small Sebenza sent to me weighs just 2.7 ounces, yet I would have no hesitation subjecting it to the heaviest use. Sebenzas large and small are available with a—how shall I put this, Chris?—whacky array of CNC-machined and anodized-color designs on the non-clip side of the handle (mine, I note, is called “Retro”). Never fear—plain, beautifully textured titanium is a choice as well, for less money. Make sure you get something you can live with, because given the way this knife is built, your heirs will be quarreling over it. (Custom designs are available, too—I can’t help wondering what a large Sebenza with an Overland Journal compass rose on it would look like . . .) One last happy note: With every Sebenza, Chris Reeve includes a hex key, with which he suggests you occasionally disassemble the knife for cleaning—thus proving himself one of the few knifemakers who don’t assume their customers are incompetent idiots. chrisreeve.com, 208-375-0367

The Edge Pro Apex sharpening system Sharp knives, long-lasting knives

et me be clear up front, just to waylay any disparaging comments from you Luddites: It’s perfectly possible to put a razor edge on a knife using nothing more sophisticated than a couple of good stones and some oil, and perhaps a bit of leather for a strop. It’s been done that way for centuries. But here’s the problem: No matter how proficient you are at sharpening by hand, it’s not possible to hold a precise, repeatable angle on the blade with every stroke you make across the stone, and with every sharpening session. The result is that every time you sharpen your knife, you’re likely to remove a tiny bit more material than absolutely necessary—and that results in excess wear on the blade. Fact of life. Over the years, various products have addressed this problem. An early (1979) and laudable attempt was the Lansky sharpener, which held the blade in a clamp and employed stones with guide rods. It still works very well, but is fiddly. More recently, angled ceramic rods and spring-loaded devices have taken different approaches to the same goal. Last summer, Ben Dale at Edge Pro sent me one of his Apex model sharpeners. After using it for a year, I’m very impressed, and convinced it can add decades to the usable life of virtually any knife. The Apex employs stones guided by a rod—similar to the Lansky approach—to ensure precise repetition of whatever sharpening angle you choose (four presets or anything in between). But the Edge Pro goes beyond the Lansky in several important areas. First, the base of the Edge Pro locks down securely and quickly to a countertop via suction cups, rendering the assembly very stable. Second, the stones provided with the Edge Pro are larger and the control rod longer, so each stroke is longer and much easier to control (helped by the large grip knob), and you can sharpen the

length of many blades without moving the knife. The stones use water for lubrication rather than oil, so the whole process is much less messy. Since the knife is not clamped to the assembly, if necessary on a long knife you can move it up and down easily to ensure even work the length of the blade. Sharpening anything from a 2.5-inch Finnish puukko to a 10inch chef ’s knife is simple. In fact, you could sharpen a machete on the Apex, if you need a really sharp machete. The Apex kits vary in content, but can include stones from coarse (120-grit) to exceedingly fine (1000-grit), as well as 3000- and 7000-grit polishing tape, in case you’re totally obsessive and want to put one of those mythical ninja edges on your knife—you know, where a silk handkerchief dropped on the upturned blade falls neatly in two. A ceramic rod is also included, for touching up the edge in between sessions with the stones.

$155 - $225

By Jonathan Hanson

Sharpening a knife on the Apex isn’t a brainless process. The angle of the stone is locked in, but since you hold the knife against the guide shelf, you need to concentrate to avoid tilting it. And working on alternate sides of the blade requires switching knife and stone from hand to hand. However, once you get the angle on a new knife set to one of the Edge Pro’s marks, re-sharpening is effortless and fast, and the amount of material removed is microscopic. I use the medium, 220 stone until I feel a burr on the edge, then switch to the 320 and 600 stones to reduce and finally remove the burr, followed by a few strokes on the ceramic rod. Two results: a keen edge that can be touched up several times with the rod before needing the stones again, and the comforting knowledge that my expensive knives will last a lot longer. edgeproinc.com, 451-3872222 79

Overland Journal Summer 2009

Old route seemed to have pinballed from one landmark (far horizon, right of outcrop) to another. Wise counsel and a likely legacy from the Journal days of Summer camel caravans. Overland 2009

Solo

Algeria,

part one

Into the Sahara in an unknown, unproven vehicle Story and photography by Tom Sheppard

Overland Journal Summer 2009

he dormant idea was finally morphing into a resolution. No longer a hmm, maybe or wouldn't it be good if . . . I was heading northwest across a smooth, sandy plain that stretched to the horizon. Behind me was Jebel Uweinat, a gigantic 20- by 15-kilometre massif of granite and sandstone that rises, isolated, 1,300 metres above the desert, rich in 8,000-year-old rock art, on the conjoined borders of Libya, Egypt, and Sudan. I was executing probably the 20th on-the-move rangechange of the day from low to high, with its attendant juggling of gear levers, tap-dancing on the clutch, and blipping the throttle. The underlying layer in my expeditioner’s

perception still simmered over the cam-belt misalignment saga brought to my notice, pre-expedition, by the grapevine rather than, as it should have been, by the manufacturer. It bridled too at the frighteningly high fuel consumption manifested by the 300 Tdi when called upon to work hard. And at the stubborn, penny-pinching, five-decades-long impossibility of finding cross-axle diff-locks as a manufacturer-designed, quality-assured, tested and authenticated OEM option. For the vast, smooth, sandy plain ahead was not what it seemed. It was in fact a deepchurned, crust-broken, multi-skeined route resulting from 40 or 50 years’ worth of freebooting, cheap-labour-laden truck traffic

from Sudan to Libya. The smooth surface was merely the result of perennial sand storms that covered over, thinly, the reality of the challenge it offered to small 4WDs. Even 36-year relationships sometimes come up for review. I wanted straightforward on-the-move range changing, I wanted diff-locks everywhere diff-locks could be fitted, I wanted a bit more payload, and I was not averse to the concept I had so long idealised—an automatic transmission, if it was done right. And above all I wanted peerless engineering and reliability. Solo in the Sahara—or anywhere else outback—was no place for random mechanical problems. Astonishingly cavalier treatment at Mercedes dealerships elsewhere saw me flying to Munich in the end. And then again, five months later, to pick up my G-Wagen: something of a one-off, built to a carefully concocted specification around the rock-of-ages 5-cylinder, 2.9-litre Mercedes OM602 turbodiesel and four-speed automatic transmission. The checklist of right-hand drive, van body, no air-conditioning, and a heavy-duty rear axle allowing a GVWR of 3,500 kg must have had them groaning in Graz. I begged to differ over Mercedes’ insistence that 235/16 mudterrains would be fine for the desert and, to find a wheel at once capable of accommodating a 265/75R16 BFG All-Terrain and taking that axle load, had to call upon Dunlop to make a set of wheels to do the job: Discovery rims welded to Mercedes inner wheel discs bought elsewhere. My initial specified offset put the left rear tyre frighteningly close to the fuel tank—my fault, and Dunlop, bless them, re-made the wheels for me. Inevitably, more of my own modifications followed. Nothing external except an over-cab fresh-air scoop. Inside there were strap-down can racks at the bulkhead immediately behind the driver, a split-charge auxiliary battery (interchangeable with the main battery), fluorescent lights, battery master-switch, lashing Left: Fadnoun Plateau south of Illizi. The track before the tarmac can be imagined; 270km of it. Opposite left: Yes, I think we get the point. Descending from the Fadnoun, there's a danger of backing into the "danger" sign. Right: A Starbucks for the four-legged at Tabelbalet. Refuelling 50 camels seemed to have relaxed them nicely. Raising all the water by hand from that well was hours of hard graft for their Touareg carers. Bleeding hands got bandaged.

Overland Journal Summer 2009

points, side-panel insulation—the usual stuff. Modular, lashable cargo-boxes for unloadable weight reduction if necessary; nothing builtin. Ninety-five-litre fuel tank augmented by six or up to eight 20-litre cans of diesel; three 20-litre water cans. Waiting seemed to be the default condition. In the five years it had taken me to get the visa to visit Libya’s Uweinat I had done a trip, two trips, actually, to Southern Africa to ward off the frustration. Now, as I took delivery of the G-Wagen, Libya closed its doors again. To me. An authorised rescue beacon test had wrong-footed the system when I was last there and “a file” had been issued by the security people. Then Chris Scott’s Sahara Overland website—some GPS waypoints of a particular sector passed on from some Germans, as I recall—alerted me to the fact that, despite persistent talk of bandits and vehicle hijacking, Algeria might be back on the menu after all this time. Algeria and its dune fields.

on I did a course once at the military parachute school, when parachutes were small and round, and delivered you back to mother earth with wholly inappropriate rapidity. At the school, the motto, somewhat optimistically, was, “Knowledge dispels fear.” Or crystallises it. Based on knowledge, I have never lost my respect, certainly bordering on fear, of dune fields. It’s a valuable asset and keeps you on your toes. As I have repeatedly seen in the past, things can go horribly wrong, especially in high-sun conditions: no-texture ochre glare, trying hard to look ahead, seeking

to determine, with your eyes stopped down to f22, the minuscule differences in colour that could indicate a dune edge. On-foot recce, more on-foot recce, avoiding places you can’t get out of, testing the firmness—all that. Now, though, I was back in Algeria on the Merc’s first trip—Merc 1—and things seemed to be off to a good start as I probed the desert south of Hassi Bel Guebbour. I was gradually aware of joining the path of what appeared, judging by the wide tyre marks, to have been a convoy of very large vehicles. The tracks picked a sensible line east through the dune valleys, then swung south to crest a whaleback. I followed, and as I reached the top was confronted with a scene from a James Bond movie. Doctor No’s giant, killer-virus gloop factory. A huge bowl among the dunes dotted with caravans and big machines, rigs, generators, tents, vehicle parks, and the hubbub and clatter of a great project. Like ants flushed from their nest, people emerged from shelters and came running toward me. What a welcome! Then I saw they had guns. Rifles raised in the air for cocking. The lead man had a mobile radio in one hand and a pistol in the other. Ah, I thought. That’ll be for the bandits. Lone white 4WD skylined and looking down at them; who knew how many vehicles behind me over the crest, ready for the strike. I turned off the engine and got out of the vehicle very slowly. I did everything very slowly. And just stood there. Fifteen minutes later, guns stowed, closely escorted into the camp, I was sipping chilled orange juice in an air-conditioned caravan with le patron, a smiling, affable M. Meradji,

while the Arabic coffee brewed. I got to the serious dunes just about midday. The timing could hardly have been worse. They would have caused less concern had it not been for the harsh, blinding overhead sunlight that masked their contour, shape, and, vitally, their edges. I delayed an hour and a half to let the sun move round and provide some side lighting and hopefully a little texture to the terrain, but even at 1430 it was still dangerous, and I walked miles on foot checking aiming points and run-up tracks to make sure I didn’t return prematurely to my career as a pilot. At Tabelbalet Well I found 50 camels being watered, and Touareg with sore hands from pulling on the well ropes. The track— route is the better word, for so far there was nothing to go on—southeast to Illizi was an old one from French days. The aim of my whole trip was to trace some of these routes, see if any of the old forts still existed, and take in country I had not seen before. The last time I had been over the rocky Fadnoun Plateau that stretched south from Illizi had been in 1979, before this forbidding sector had been tarmacked. Even now Michelin marks it as “difficult or dangerous,” which is something of an overstatement. But memories of that 270 km of nightmare rock corrugations stir admiration for what the French took on in hacking out the track in the first place. Looking at the other-worldly chaos of black rock, boulders and volcanic debris, it’s difficult to imagine the resolution, tenacity, or sheer arrogance of the French who decided to build a driveable “road” over the Fadnoun in its original iteration. How many bulldozer blades did they reOverland Journal Summer 2009

"Buildngs open to the sky all echo with the vultures cry . . ." Old French outpost roughly 130 track km southeast of Amguid.

duce to blunted junk, I wondered. Off the southern edge of the plateau, zigzagging down through the wild rockscape of fantastical eroded towers to the plain and on into Zaouatallaz, I hoped to find the old track towards Amguid, 440 km northwest, coarsely marked on the Michelin map but indicated in more detail on the impeccable 1:200,000 French IGN (Institut Géographique Nationale) maps of the 1960s and ‘70s I had managed to procure many years earlier. After glimpsing the rocky environs of the lonely outpost of Amguid off to the north, nestled in the side of the great escarpment, I would have to turn south for Tamanrasset, another 460 km on, for fuel and water. At a theoretical 900-odd kms—it turned out more—it was logistically challenging in terms of payload, diesel, and drinking water. An extra crew member would have equated to around 250 kg all-in, so for these kinds of distances between replenishments I travelled on my own. In truth, for preference too. As a photographer I find I am not able to concentrate on the job if there are impatient non-photographers around who simply don’t understand the imperatives of waiting for the light, trudging around to get the right setting and composition, spending an hour or more before setting off in the morning to get the right pictures when the sun angle is low and then, 20 minutes later, probably stopping to do the same thing all over again. The cameras rule. The beauty is a spiritual experience to be savoured deeply and captured with the greatest Overland Journal Summer 2009

care. I cannot know if it appeals to everyone as I preserve the moment in time—the combination of shape, light, shade, colour gradient, and the associated evocation of space— but I have to be honest in reacting to the call. Being in the desert on your own heightens the perceptions and raises the impact of its calm pristine majesty to the power of three. The solitude and tranquillity is addictive and, once experienced, its legacy is ineradicable; its appeal impossible to relinquish. And of course my cooking may not be to another’s taste anyway. The bread wears a sinister mould by day six, and you wouldn’t want anyone whingeing about it when you have to revert to those biscuity crisp-bread things that look as if they are made of asbestos.

If you have not travelled in these parts you should know that the ultimate and indispensable planning map is the Michelin sheet 741. At a fairly broad-brush scale of 1:4,000,000, and covering all of Africa in three sheets, it is updated every couple of years although, alas, it no longer shows the all-important fuel stations as it once did. It nevertheless gives an indispensable overview of the road/track network of the Sahara—mostly showing the southward spread of tarmac on the main routes. But despite Michelin’s jaunty depiction of the old route between Zaouatallaz and Amguid as, according to the key, a “Recognised or marked track,” about 85 percent of it just isn’t there. The desert winds (if you’ll ex-

cuse the phrase) and nature have obliterated that much of it—even, amazingly, some of the old corrugations. I guessed most of these old French tracks were based around even older camel routes, and a new form of what I termed IN (intuitive navigation) arose on its own. Getting to the end of what seemed to have been the visible alignment of the track and finding it no more, I found myself scanning the horizon and thinking, If I were starting from scratch, which direction would I go now? Usually, if the practicality of the terrain did not dictate otherwise, there would be some distant landmark that formed a logical target. Almost invariably this educated guess would be right, and in due course I would find a series of very old wheel marks to back up the assumption. I was very lucky that the terrain here was open enough, in many cases, to not even need the track alignment but, firstly, I was not pushing my luck through this country; secondly, following what had once been a pretty major route would ensure the best chance of getting through later where the terrain closed in; and thirdly, tracing the old track and finding the intriguingly-indicated old buildings or forts was what I had come to do. The sheer perfection of the scenery, the pristine grandeur of the landscape even at high noon—bare jagged rocks and ridges rising from clean, smooth sand sheets—soon calmed my navigational concerns and had me writing in the log about “ . . . all this, here every day. All this beauty going to waste. My God, it brings tears to your eyes.” For roughly the first 350 km, heading northwest towards Amguid, the vista was one of a vast plain to the south and rocky hills to the north, the forerunners of the great Fadnoun Plateau named on the bigger maps as the Tassili n’ Ajjer. The sense of space was almost overwhelming—the horizons seemed farther away, the sky bigger. And here, where the alignment of the old track was shown on the maps, the plain and the rock outcrops intermingled, sometimes gently with low rounded hills buttressed by small dune formations, or more dramatically with sharp-profiled bare ridges or conical intrusions. Usually it was one of these that formed the aiming point for the track, and you could imagine, in years gone by, the slow camel trains pacing endlessly toward them over the flat, sandy sheet; then the noisy Citroen half-tracks and, later, the ubiquitous

open-top Dodge Power Wagons with their kepi-wearing crews. Around day three out of Zaouatallaz the IN navigation method let me down and, concentrating too long on following what I assumed was the correct track, I found myself a good bit farther north than intended. So, as the old route appeared and disappeared with such frequency, I devised a new method. With extraordinary accuracy, the 50-year-old French IGN maps were a safe bet to show where the track had once been. So now I created a waypoint five to 10 miles ahead, exactly on the track shown by the map, and let the GPS indicate, as I went, how much farther I had to go and what heading in order to hit the

spot. Thus, with or without old wheel marks to guide me and allowing whatever diversions I had to make to avoid rocks or hills, I would be heading for an anchor point I knew was on what had once been the track. It worked with comforting accuracy and was a further accolade for the French cartographers. Though Google Earth (not available yet on this trip) is sheer perfection for desert navigation with GPS, no satellite can provide the local names of hills, valleys, wadis, and wells that the French, with their painstaking application and use of Touareg guides, secured for their IGN maps. Re-oriented and privy now to areas of the country I might not otherwise have seen,

I stopped for a lunch-time snack—and had visitors. It was only then I realised I’d seen them before. The two ravens. At first I thought it was the same two, but subsequent encounters on this and other trips seemed to indicate that it was, if not in their DNA, then certainly in their Training Manual for all ravens to investigate in this fashion. “If anything moving stops, hang around. It might have died and could be your big meal—for the next four weeks!” Sleek, very black, shiny and very smart, their initial recce was pure Hitchcock. An overflight so their shadows cross the bonnet of the G-Wagen, warning the incumbent meal there are giant flesheating pterodactyls around. They would then

Being in the desert on your own heightens the perceptions and raises the impact of its calm pristine majesty to the power of three. and, once experienced,

The solitude and tranquillity is addictive

its legacy is ineradicable; its appeal impossible to relinquish.

Wild rockscape of eroded cinder-like mineral fringes the descent from the Fadnoun Plateau. Overland Journal Summer 2009

land gently 75 metres away, as a pair, and strut up and down in that slightly goose-steppy way they have, as if the meeting was pure chance and hello over there and how are you doing today? Ravens. Very smart. Maybe they’d heard about my mouldy bread. Though it disgraced itself on the first day off-tracks with a leaking shock absorber— there’d be some thoughts on this kind of thing later on—the G-Wagen was proving to be the model desert transport. The seats and driving position were perfect; ten hours’ driving left zero after-effects. This being the Type 461 (what I called the Civil Engineer’s model, unlike the fur-lined 463 with its pretentious leather and walnut), it had selectable 4WD, and, whilst I’d not yet had to use them in anger, the on-the-move low-to-high transfer capability and both-axles diff-locks gave me a nice warm feeling. The automatic gearbox and OM602 turbodiesel was a marriage made in heaven. I never knew what gear I was in, but at day’s end thought back to the number of gear changes I’d have had to make if I’d been driving a manual. The throttle was a mere torque pedal. A whisker under 200 miles out from Zaouatallaz, my jerry-can fill gave me 23 mpg (UK gallons) which, virtually all off-tracks and pushing a GVW of three tonnes, gave me an even warmer feeling. With nearly 8,000 miles on the clock and nicely bedding-in, I was getting to be

A spiky fan of small peaks were ready to host the sunset . . . Overland Journal Summer 2009

very much in favour of G-Wagens. Was my new navigation system going to work when the chips were down? I positioned Waypoint 46 13 miles ahead, precisely where the IGN map showed the track should be. Here, there was nothing; the track was nowhere to be seen. I was heading into low stony hills and there was no indication of where the old route might have lain. I was not happy about what the stones were doing to the tyres but, as ever, the BFGs took it all in their stride. I was running at 1.8 bar, a nice compromise for intermittent stones and softish sand. Giant tufts of vegetation that resembled clusters of four-foot welding rods rather than grass clogged the valleys through which I tried to weave, and I was forced up onto the stony hills again. The GPS gave me the freedom to select the best path but still, in general, head for my target. Waypoint 46 was now a couple of miles away but things were not looking good. With that calm insouciant astonishing reliability that GPS has, the distance to go wound down to under a mile, decimals of a mile, and then hundreds of feet. It wasn’t going to work this time. Not a sign of a track or where it might have been. Four hundred feet, still nothing. Can’t win ‘em all. At 150 feet I stopped, got out slowly and looked around at the dismal scene. The terrain ahead looked pretty awful. It’s always

cloudy at times like this. Then, there, 50 yards away: a faint trace of old track-corrugations. Mabrouk! Bravo, les Francaises! GPS and satellites hadn’t even been dreamed of when they made these maps. But . . . such phenomenal accuracy. Impressive. The French surveyors were making music with their theodolites all those years ago.

The tiny black icon on the map showed a building that should have been close-by. It was the focus of my curiosity. Surely an old fort, a tattered tricolor still fluttering in the breeze, the wreckage of an old biplane next to a broken building. Berthier rifles scattered around; sandblasted wine bottles rocking back and forth in the gusty wind. No? No. An old building, yes; with an old tyre in the middle, the roof timbers long since taken for other uses. But there was an atmosphere about the place. Silent and still. Looking around at the old window and door portals, the hollow courtyard, you could imagine the activity. The Power Wagons parked outside. The water trailer returning from the well in the wadi below, where its course made an S-bend. Here the track heading northwest toward Amguid had been graded for a short distance; they’d had a bulldozer and intermittently

over the next few dozen miles you could see the berms it had left to indicate the track. It seemed this place had been the terminus for patrols from Amguid. Amazing place. No biplanes, but it reeked of history. I called it Fort Xanadu, from the old song (“Buildings open to the sky all echo with the vultures’ cry . . .”). I was on track for Amguid. Only around 60 to 90 miles before emerging from the mountains and turning south, I reckoned. The past traffic to and from Fort Xanadu made the route easier to follow, and I was soon moving off the old track to avoid the remaining corrugations which nature hadn’t quite finished obliterating. The giant rock cliffs marking the valley’s emergence onto the plain south of Amguid loomed through the haze. Smallminded soft sand humps had spoiled the exit; the diff-locks were earning their keep but I was soon able to turn south across a great plain. To the west, by afternoon camping time, a spiky fan of small peaks were ready to host the sunset, and next morning, east, was a long clean run of creamy-coloured dunes, foregrounding blue rock mountains beyond. Perfect symmetry put a dune-edge peak precisely beneath a dip in the silhouette of the mountains on the horizon. You almost wanted to hold your breath. The dunes were clean, firm, beautiful and I ran the wheels over the slopes

gently, with care and respect. “Awesome” is a grossly over-used word these days, but nothing better describes the tall dignified massif that is Garet el Djenoun—2,330 metres high and visible for 50 km in any direction—holding dominion over the Teffedest range of mountains south, and the long sandy plain to the north. The name translates as “Mountain of the Spirits” and it has an appropriate presence. Moussorgski would have loved it. For me, in the nav log it was (with due deference) GEDJ. And where I stopped for the night, tiny and insignificant at its foot, was a special breed of GEDJfranchised biting things. I never saw or heard them, so I guess they were sand flies. I spent most of the next day scratching and hoping the swellings would go down. I found a valley to take me, carefully and logging the route, west past the great mountain to intercept, thirty-odd miles later, the main sandy track down to the tarmac that would lead to Tamanrasset. There were favourite peaks to visit that I’d been to before in this region, again that extraordinary mix of wide plain, smoothed crunchy sand, clean crisp dune edges, and pointed peaks emerging as if put there to some grand scenic design. And it was my birthday, too. Tamanrasset is the place everyone wants to visit in the Sahara, even if they fly in from

the north. Mercifully (and here we must thank the “security situation” which keeps the numbers low), it has avoided the feel of a tourist destination. If you want to see the extraordinary Hoggar peaks and the sobering hermitage of Père Charles de Foucauld at Assekrem, “Tam” is where you head. It has diesel—mostly spread around the forecourt of the fuel station half an inch deep—pure water from the taps, a market from which to buy vegetables, and an intriguingly designed hotel where you can get a shower and a meal. Being a foreigner in Tam is no big deal. The locals take you as part of the scenery; you could not ask for more. Brit TV’s travelling nice guy is Michael Palin. His producer was planning “Sahara” and had been in touch with me. Almost unbelievably our paths crossed in Tam. The film crew and director were equally nice; an amazing team. We dined; they half-Nelsoned me into doing a sequence for the film in the Hoggar. They were having trouble finding Englishspeakers for the sound track. The Merc made its film debut. I left them northbound to Assekrem, and returned to join the queue for diesel at Tam. The Merc had done well. Very well. I got out the maps; a special plan began to emerge for the trip back north to Algiers.

Overland Journal Summer 2009

Algeria Trip

Route

Map by Andrew Long; revised by David Madeiros (mapbliss.com)

Overland Journal Summer 2009

Tom Sheppard’s

Mercedes Benz G-Wagen

y the time these words are printed, my G-Wagen, nudging 50,000 miles on the clock, nearly all of which have been accumulated going to, from, or in the Sahara, will be coming up to its tenth birthday. Even on close inspection it’s hard to tell that it’s more than about six months old. The Type 461 G-Wagen—what I call the civil engineers’ version—was just the start. A hellofa good start, but something of a primed and well-stretched blank canvas for expedition work. When I ordered it, I knew I would be busy. Electrics, navigation, tyres, wheels, tie-downs, racks, security, insulation, and ventilation all clamoured for priority on the ‘to do’ sheet.’

Overland Journal Summer 2009

Gilding the Lily

1. The spectre of a flat battery after a night using interior lights for cooking, chores, and to plan the next day’s navigation put a separate-circuit, split-charge spare high on the list of modifications. I opted for an identical Mercedes 100Ah heavy-duty battery as fitted to the base vehicle, which could thus double as a spare should the need arise. I shoe-horned it just aft of the seats in the cab, with immensely strong mounting arrangements. A rollover might be survivable, but not with a 30-kg battery cartwheeling around the cab. After a bad experience with a cheaper type, a dust-proof truck-type change-over relay was fitted. 2. The stygian black interior of the original cab was a photographic D-max until you got your night vision, so—deep breath before trying to get the panels off without breaking those little nylon clips—I went for a Bentley-Continental-seats shade of cream to brighten it up. To my surprise it’s been exceptionally durable. Auto-store spray cans of plastic primer and touch-up beige direct onto the panels has lasted. 3. The only external excrescences are the puck-sized GPS antenna and—highly valued from previous trips rather than the cost, weight, and power-sapping alternative of air conditioning—an ambient-air scoop at the top of the windscreen, with internal eye-ball vents to control airflow. Resolve was required to fit this since it meant cutting two three-inch holes in the G-Wagen’s metal roof, as well as aligning butchery on the massive two piece head-lining. You had to be sure it was all going to work. The final item is the DIBS-mirror—a means of reflecting the sun as a bright spot on the ground ahead to warn, in max-glare conditions, of sand dune edges or odd slopes. In accordance with my usual mantra, there is no roof rack and nothing is carried externally. 4. G-Wagen roof insulation is an impressive thermal barrier, but the sides of the van body needed similar treatment to reduce heat-gain and lower decibels. Polystyrene sheeting, hardboard, and hard-carpet trim were applied to the exposed surfaces (screwed-on alloy battens, not glue) and the floor too disappeared beneath felt and rubber to protect the paint and cushion the load. Keeping that load where it was put was a priority, and the dual-skin internal body structure enabled a huge number of lashing cleats to be bolted on, as well as robust wooden frames to keep the fuel and water cans strapped down at the mid-wheel-base location. Actual mpg later permitted reduction to six fuel cans for an 800-mile off-tracks excursion.

5. When not lunching alfresco, a simple mod sits a tea tray over the gear lever and switches. Invaluable for evening “office work,” too. Large Lowrance 3500c GPS screen is easy to read. Durable Mercedes upholstery, visible on left, on ergonomic Mercedes seats. 6. The back door was modified to act as a fold-down kitchen table for the MSR Dragonfly multi-fuel stove (used with kerosene, not diesel); a locking prop prevents the whole door swinging in the wind to the detriment of your consommé au Campbells. The back window wears a steel mesh grille to deter opportunists, and—a tongue-in-cheek contribution from a friend—lace curtains to make it harder to see into the dark space within. The front windows now have that special brick-proof “armoured” Pentagon Supa-glass film on them—tested to destruction by hooligans in the U.K. whilst the wagon was in the Mercedes dealer’s yard overnight. Not specially observant, the thieves were after the satnav, but failed to notice the rooftop antenna without which it could not work.

Overland Journal Summer 2009

7. Finally, a wheel claw: the Merc version of a tool I devised for a Defender, but which has to be tailored for the particular wheel on which it would be used. If you are inattentive enough to get bogged down and need to jack up to get sand mats under the wheel, jacking at the wheel is far more elegant than grovelling under the axle or staggering under the weight of a Hi-Lift with its attendant suspension sag and risk of toppling. A kilo or so, foldable, and small enough to keep under the seat where the bottle-jack rides, it has earned its keep more times than I should be ready to admit.

The

advent ure

Trans-America Trail America’s greatest motorcycle

The wind howls over my helmet, drowning out the motor and the music. The rain stings at my neck, and I fight against the gusts, the blowing sand, and

the unknown that awaits.

Story by Scott Brady Photography by Scott Brady and Brian DeArmon Overland Journal Summer 2009

THE SUN BEAT DOWN on my helmet as I sat on my idling motorcycle, contemplating what I would have to accomplish on it in the next couple of minutes. The task ahead was clear; I knew what I had to do and how to do it. I knew that I could do it— yet I was forced to wait. The success of our entire journey hinged on my ability to safely maneuver a 500-pound KTM 950 through the next hundred yards or so. At last: The inspector called me forward and directed me toward the traffic-cone obstacle course. It was three days before I was to leave on a 2,000-mile trip on the Trans-America Trail—and I was at the Motor Vehicle Department in Prescott, testing for my motorcycle license. Okay—it might have been a little reckless to tackle the Trans-America Trail with only three weeks of planning and two short practice rides. But I did have a plan, along with the hope that all the years I spent riding dirt bikes would give me a head start on the skills needed to ride on tarmac, and then wield a fully loaded adventure motorcycle across 2,000 miles of trails from Colorado to the Pacific Ocean.

The TAT

Twelve years. That’s how long it took Sam Correro to piece together his dream of an eastto-west, cross-country adventure motorcycle route. Sam combined map research with hundreds of hours in the saddle of his Kawasaki KLX to create what is now known as the Trans-America Trail, or TAT, which presently extends 4,800 miles from Tennessee to Oregon—92 percent of it on dirt roads, two-track, and single-track trails. I was captivated by the idea of traversing the western half of the TAT, through the most remote areas of Colorado, Utah, Nevada, California, and Oregon—but I needed a window of time, a motorcycle, and, oh, a motorcycle license. The window came in July of 2008, and luckily, my good friend Brian DeArmon was also available. Next, I needed a motorcycle, and all the associated luggage, tools, and spares. I love the big BMW GS Adventures, but all of my riding experience had been on dirt bikes, which made a KTM the natural choice for me. I found a used KTM 950 Adventure at Star Island Motorsports in Prescott, Arizona, and then turned my attention to new Continental tires, a few key spares (such as a fuel pump, a known weak spot on this model), and Ortlieb soft luggage. The Trans-America Trail represents one of the greatest motorcycle journeys available in the 48 states. It has all of the components of a grand adventure, including technical terrain, the requirement for complicated navigation, difficulty in obtaining fuel and supplies, remote and rarely-visited destinations, and a fantastic goal, which is to cross the United States almost entirely on dirt—an astounding concept in the 21st century. Brian and I only had time to ride from Colorado to Oregon, but our experience proved no less epic. Left: Oregon and its trees were a blessing and a curse. Miles of single track made up central Nevada, creating a narrow corridor through the sagebrush. Overland Journal Summer 2009

Colorado We kicked off the ride in Denver, from EarthRoamer headquarters, which also made it convenient for many of our friends to show up and send us off. From Denver, it was 200 miles on I-25 to where we would intersect the trail. It was also my first introduction to the implement of torture that is the KTM seat. After several stops to regain blood flow, we arrived at our first section of dirt, which carried us on wide, graded roads into Wheeler Canyon and our first camp. This was my first experience with motorcycle camping, and it felt good to get back to basics, like the backpacking I did as a kid with my father. Adventure motorcycling was beginning to make sense: I was in tune with the freedom that comes from forcefully reducing the amount of equipment you can take on a journey. This lack of clutter and distraction was already making every moment of the trip more engaging. One of the most compelling things about the route Sam assembled is that the roads and tracks are not only off the beaten path, they also avoid most of the popular OHV destinations in the country (Moab being an exception). This meant that nearly all of the 2,800 miles I would ride would be in “uncharted” territory, re-introducing me to the magic of adventure travel in my own country. Not far west of Salida, I got the full impact of that magic. I was standing on the pegs of the KTM, riding at about 40 mph on a smooth, graded road that wound through an idyllic little valley, flanked on both sides by jagged mountains, their northern slopes still covered in snow. The temperature was cool but not chilly, and as the wind pushed against me, I had the sense of flight. I was leaning far enough forward that the bike was no longer visible, just the canyon ahead, carpeted with flowing grass and divided by a meandering creek, filled nearly to overflowing by the melting snow. Like the creek, I was filled nearly to overflowing with the thought of how fortunate I was to be riding here. I had another aha moment in Colorado, this time riding along a short stretch of paved twolane road coming into Telluride. I was leaning through the turns, power on from the big twin, then a handful of Brembo brakes before again leaning as far as I dared with the Continentals at trail pressure. It was pure glee, and then the light bulb clicked on – this is why people buy motorcycles!

Utah

I am riding on a bright-

orange magic carpet.

For the 15 years I have been traveling to Moab, I always wanted to drive a little farther east, into the La Sal Mountains. Fortunately, Sam’s route took us right over them. The La Sals soar in white-capped contrast to Moab’s red sandstone (and in further contrast, there is no one there). We plunged off the range and into the desert via the Sand Flats road, a route I had driven countless times before in various 4WDs, but which, as I found with all familiar roads, feels entirely different on a motorcycle. We camped surrounded by ancient sand dunes now frozen in time; massive sandstone fins blocking out only part of the dense display of stars above. From Moab, we rode toward Gemini Bridges, and climbed a long, technical sand hill, one that I had read stopped several TAT riders on larger BMWs just a few weeks prior. It could have been the cool of the morning (which compacts the sand a bit), or just good luck, but Brian and I made the climb with no drama, and continued westward to our first serious challenge. Black Dragon Canyon cuts through the San Rafael Swell, and proved to be a serious battle for both the KTM and Brian’s BMW F650GS, with large boulders and loose dirt climbs. The canyon had been wrecked by a massive flash flood a few years prior, and parts of the track were a mixed bag of sand, rocks, and gnarled trees. Our reward was a display of nearly life-size, 1,000-year-old Fremont Culture pictographs protected by a large, overhanging sandstone shelf. The terrain of eastern Utah is highly varied, mixing deserts, slickrock, and pine forests. West of the Sevier Desert the roads flatten and straighten, and here we rolled on the throttles and aimed for the state line. Top to bottom: Brian climbs the eastern slope to Ophir Pass. In Utah's Black Dragon Canyon, 600-foot walls hide human-sized pictographs in the shadows. Gemini Bridges was a sandstone playground. Overland Journal Summer 2009

Overland Journal Summer 2009

The ride has become visceral.

Every sound is amplified, every temperature, every emotion.

Clockwise: Tumbleweeds piled into a low part of the trail; yes, that was the trail. Managing a sandy descent in Nevada, where the route was remote and always challenging. Cinnamon Pass was the most difficult climb in Colorado, and had just opened a few days prior. A series of rock ledges made the exit from Black Dragon Canyon a challenge. Opposite: Sam's maps were always present, stored in a bar pack and referenced often. Overland Journal Summer 2009

Nevada

The sun punctures the clouds, striking a spotlight on the road ahead, which rolls into the distance, fading into the

violet-colored mountains.

Nevada is the most remote and technical riding of the western TAT, challenging the rider with long, loose climbs, narrow and overgrown single track, and fuel-sapping distances between supplies. For us, Nevada started with a particularly creepy visit to the gas station on the border with Utah. Rolling up to the state line, my first thought was, This is how Quentin Tarantino movies start. Over 80 miles from the nearest town, a throng of pale-skinned 20-year-olds surrounded a makeshift stage, a rock band kicking them into motion. As they writhed with the beat and grew visibly agitated, Brian and I hurried to finish filling the bikes as the last thread of sun crept toward the horizon. I was sure it had to be explainable, but why were there no other cars, and where did they all come from? More frightened for my life since that illegal border crossing into Algeria, we sped off into the desert dusk, hoping someone, or something wasn’t following us. Nevada has a hidden beauty lost on the casual visitor, who notices only that its seemingly desolate landscape lacks the visual impact of Colorado and Utah. However, our route was filled with technical challenges for the big bikes, including a 100-mile long section of waterlogged mud that nearly finished our trip. Brian is a skilled rider, but was caught off-guard by a section of moistened silt that disguised a 12-inch-deep rut. At speed, the front tire of the BMW slid into the rut, twisting the bike sideways and launching Brian to the opposite side of the track, where he landed squarely on his shoulder with a sickening thud. He lay motionless for a moment, and then slowly began to roll to his back. By then, I had dismounted the KTM and run to his side. “My shoulder popped out of the socket,” was the first thing he said, followed by, “But I think it popped back in.” With a few minutes of rest, Brian was willing to try moving his fingers, then hands, and finally his shoulder. In obvious pain, he responded in typical fashion. “Well, it isn’t doing us any good sitting here; let’s ride.” Off he went, and never complained once about the injury or the pain that undoubtedly lingered for the rest of the trip.

California There is no gas in California. At least, not on the Trans-America Trail. The KTM’s low-fuel light came on about 15 miles from Fort Bidwell. Fortunately, most of the remaining route was downhill. I coasted down the main street and searched desperately for any sign of activity—a flickering Mobil sign perhaps? Nothing. Slowly, I idled the KTM to the north, the wide, tree-lined street partially concealing turn-of-the-century cottages and perfectly manicured yards. Not a single convenience store, hardware store, or establishment of any kind was visible. I was starting to get worried. The low fuel light appeared to be taunting me and getting brighter. Looking down one of the side streets, a small Chevron sign came into view, and, feeling proud of myself for spotting it, I made the turn and puttered over toward the pumps. My glee turned to concern, then to resignation when I rode up to the pump, which was nearly obscured with weeds, and read the faded fuel price: $.99 per gallon. All was not well in Bidwell, so I sat down with Brian on the steps of the defunct convenience store and pulled out the map. Just then, a 100-year-old (at least he looked it) farmer ambled up and asked if we needed fuel. He had seen other TAT riders in similar predicaments. He advised that the closest possible fuel was 30 miles south, and that they frequently ran out. Otherwise, it was another 20 miles farther south to a reliable source. To the north, there was fuel in Oregon, but that was through the mountains and on a dirt road—but at least it was in (mostly) the right direction. We decided to head north, knowing that at a minimum, Brian and the ever-efficient F650 would make it. In the end, I didn’t make it to Adel on the fuel in the tank, but I was just in sight of civilization, having nursed the thirsty twin for over 60 miles since the light came on. We emptied the contents of our spare fuel container (an MSR bottle) into the tank, and rode the last few miles to fuel and a chocolate malt.

Top: Purple mountains-majesty, in Nevada. Bottom: Fort Bidwell, its "dry" fueling station mocking the nearly dry KTM. Opposite: Brian manages a difficult rock ledge in Utah. Overland Journal Summer 2009

Overland Journal Summer 2009

Oregon

The road stretches off into the setting sun, the

strong winds of the closing storm pushing me westward.

Top: The author and his KTM at the end of the 2,000 mile route. Bottom: Crater Lake, which is off the main route, but worth the detour.

Oregon represents the greatest navigation challenge of the TAT, since much of Sam’s original route, on old logging roads that have been shut down or reclaimed by the forest, is now closed. One particular section comes to mind, in the Umpqua National Forest, where the TAT works its way along the ridgeline of Coffin Butte. The trail dropped down a ridge, and immediately got nasty, with fallen trees and boulders blocking the trail. We should have taken the hint and found a bypass; instead we rode deeper into this torturous segment, struggling to maneuver the bikes through the web of obstacles. Finally, we came to a downed, 30-inch-diameter pine tree completely blocking our way. Motorcycle tracks led past it into the track beyond, so we spent over an hour building up material on both sides of the trunk to get the bikes over it. Exhausted, yet victorious, we rode another mile down the trail—only to find the road closed. Nearly out of fuel and water, we rode back up the track, back over the pine and well into darkness, and arrived at the town of Tiller five minutes before the fuel station closed. Despite the navigation challenges, Oregon’s forests make beautiful riding. We took a detour to Crater Lake, then continued on toward the coast. But a nagging fuel pump issue on the KTM steadily worsened, and eventually, on a little road 25 miles from the coast, the pump died altogether. Fortunately, I had a stock spare, and replaced it in about 25 minutes, lying in the dirt and doing my best to not cover the bike and myself with fuel. Feeling stoked at my prescience in bringing a spare fuel pump, we were off again, riding toward China Mountain on the last leg of our journey—when my clutch started to fail. At first, it would still respond with vigorous pumping of the lever, but finally it died altogether. We sat and pondered this new development, while I watched carefully for any superior BMW smirks from Brian. We were now barely 15 miles from the coast, but in the middle of the forest on some pretty challenging tracks. We could either send Brian all the way to Port Orford to obtain some mineral oil, and attempt a repair, or I could try to ride the KTM without control of the clutch. The choice was easy. Actually, riding without a clutch is not terribly difficult. The tricky part is getting moving. This required me to crunch the bike into first gear with the engine off, take all my weight off the saddle, and punch the start button, at which point a good portion of the KTM’s 90 horsepower would ignite the rear tire into a cloud of dust, and I would try to push the bike forward with my left leg, all the while trying to maintain balance and not stall the motor. Once underway, I just shifted without the clutch, timing the changing of gears with the right mix of speed and throttle lift. Brian took off in front, doing his best to find the turns we needed to make. We made hesitant but steady progress, with only a few enforced engine-killing stops along the way. Until, quite suddenly, there was no more progress to be made. Thoroughly spent, I let the engine die on a sandy bluff, and Brian and I sat and grinned at each other, our dirt-caked faces illuminated by the sun setting over the Pacific Ocean.

Trip planning The Trans-America Trail is best completed on a long-travel adventure motorcycle. The best example would be a KTM 690 Super Enduro. The trail has been completed by larger bikes, but most take the bypasses. Ensure your motorcycle has a 160-mile dirt range (minimum). The motorcycle must be street legal due to the many road segments and need to access fuel stations. Be prepared for multiple detours and have the ability (and maps) to solve navigation problems. The route is extremely remote and sees little traffic. A SPOT device for emergencies is a good idea.

Resources

The founder’s site and the exclusive source for maps and information: transamtrail.com DVD about traveling the Trans-America Trail: motorcycletraveldvds.com Best source for current trip reports and information about the TAT: advrider.com SPOT: findmespot.com

Overland Journal Summer 2009

Note: Maps should always be purchased from Sam Correro, and one set of maps per rider. This helps support the huge effort Sam goes through to maintain the route information. Never share maps or give away GPS data without Sam's permission.

Overland Journal Summer 2009

LONG-TERM FIELD TEST Reporting on gear test and review winners after 12 months of overlanding

update

By Jonathan Hanson and Andrew Moore

Leatherman Surge

My initial comments on the Surge in the 2008 Gear Guide admitted it was not a light carry at 11.6 ounces—the second-heaviest tool in the review. Nor was it remotely pocket-friendly. The Surge needed its belt sheath. But it came the closest of all I looked at to transcending the idea of a multi-tool as a gadget to be employed for easy tasks such as opening bottles and boxes, but only in boy-did-I-screw-up extremis as a substitute for a real tool. The comfortable grip and strength of the Surge made it a match for several standard pairs of pliers I own; the replaceable saw blade made easy work of severing polyethylene tubing, and the stout scissors handled fiber gasket material with aplomb. For many other tasks I found it nearly the equal of a corresponding single-mission tool. Nothing I asked the Surge to do in the last year altered my opinion of its capabilities. It hasn’t loosened up or bent; the wire cutters haven’t dulled or chipped. However, I did notice one change: The Surge came with me less and less frequently on road trips and town excursions, and

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spent a lot more time on the work Levis I wear around our property while repairing fences, cutting baling wire, trimming limbs, etc. For traveling, I invariably chose my Leatherman Charge TTi. Why? Simple: The titanium-handled Charge weighs over a third less than the Surge, and is significantly less bulky, yet retains most of the capability and versatility (minus the quick-change saw blade and a couple other features). For my 150-pound, five-foot-eight frame, the Surge is always there while driving, for example, while I can forget I’m carrying the Charge. Still, that means the Surge has actually received more abuse than it otherwise might have. Working around our place, and hiking nearby, I’m far more likely to test a multitool beyond its design parameters. Specifically, I’m happy to note that the Surge, when employed as a hammer, prybar, or spade, holds up very nicely. If you’re a bigger man than I—literally—you might find this stand-up tool as comfortable to carry as I do its smaller brother. If so, it will serve you well. (Jonathan Hanson) leatherman.com, 800-847-8665

Extreme Outback ExtremeAir Magnum A few months ago I was out on a day trip with a few friends, traversing a mild 4WD route in the Santa Rita Mountains, for which we all aired down to around 18 psi. When we regained pavement, we all stopped to re-inflate. The fellow behind me deployed a little built-in compressor in his engine compartment, while I hauled out the tool box containing our Editor’s Choice compressor from the Spring 2008 issue, the ExtremeAir Magnum. I hooked up the leads to my auxiliary battery, connected the power with the simple quick-release junction that serves as the compressor’s only switch (still wishing it had a heavy-duty toggle instead), and it went to work with a rattling roar. I aired up all four tires on the FJ40, then noticed the fellow in back just finishing his first tire. So I went to work on his tires too. Result: The Magnum aired up six tires while the little built-in unit gaspingly finished two. That pretty much sums up this monster. The ExtremeAir Magnum is heavy, bulky, and loud, but very few 12V compressors can approach its speed or ruggedness. Were I to question any aspect of the Magnum, it would be its efficacy as a portable unit. It’s nice to have one compressor that can serve several vehicles, but the Magnum’s volume and mass does have a significant impact on most cargo areas. It needs to be well-secured, lest in a rollover you find the kinetic equivalent of a Group 31 battery ricocheting around the passenger compartment. Also, after a modest inflating session the compressor head becomes so hot that I tried to avoid coiling the hose and power cables back in the box right away, lest a section Overland Journal Summer 2009

$690

melt against the cylinder head. That left both draped across the luggage for an hour or two. Those are quibbles only of the portable configuration—more characteristics than problems—and Extreme Outback carries several smaller compressors that would alleviate most of them. The compressor itself is an indefatigable workhorse, and as a hard-mounted unit would effortlessly serve several vehicles on a group trip. (Jonathan Hanson) extremeoutback.com, 866-447-7711

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Overland Journal Summer 2009

LONG-TERM FIELD TEST Reporting on gear test and review winners after 12 months of overlanding

update

Adventure Medical Kits Comprehensive The easiest way to determine whether or not a first aid kit lives up to its billing is to work with it for a while. When you need an item, is it easy to find? Are the supplies adequate? Is the necessary item there at all? Since 2007, I have done just that with Adventure Medical Kits’ Comprehensive Kit. As mentioned in the 2008 Gear Guide, this is the largest kit in AMK’s Mountain line, although the company offers numerous other kits for virtually every need and budget. Shortly after the initial review, I packed the Comprehensive kit in the back of an old Land Cruiser for a two-week trek though the backroads of Chihuahua, Mexico, where it was undoubtedly be the best medical equipment available for miles around, there being no stocked local clinics in the small ranch villages we intended to visit. Although the trip went without incident, I used the kit to clean and dress the elbow of a local guide who had

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$190

recently undergone surgery, and was now away from appropriate supplies. Not only was everything easily accessible, the stockinette tubular bandage was exactly what was needed to keep the final dressings in place—and a big hit with the patient. Additionally, I’ve employed the AMK Comprehensive on a variety of minor injuries, mostly cuts and strains, with the major trauma pads available should the need arise. I did personalize the kit slightly to add some items available for my use as a Wilderness EMT. After the addition of a glucose monitor, stethoscope, oral and nasal airways, as well as AMK’s IV and suture kit, I feel well-prepared with the Comprehensive in either my Land Cruiser or motorcycle, whether I am headed out on a day trip or week long exploration. (Andrew Moore) adventuremedicalkits.com

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LONG-TERM FIELD TEST Reporting on gear test and review winners after 12 months of overlanding

update

Hilleberg Staika

$745

My attempts to find fault with the Hilleberg Staika (in the Summer, 2008 issue) were reduced to feeble whingeing about the tiny hooks that hold open the interior doors. Unfortunately, the succeeding year has done little to sharpen my abilities as a critic. There’s just not much bad to say about this tent. Not only that, I recently received the two-person Staika’s smaller, one-person fraternal twin, the sub-five-pound Soulo, which on first examination appears will perform just as brilliantly as a solo motor-

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cycling shelter. (Wait—do I see a flaw here? Yes: The Soulo lacks the full cross-flow ventilation capabilities of the Staika. So there. More later . . . .) Living in the Staika is easy, thanks to ample if not huge floor space (35 square feet), handily augmented by an identical vestibule and full-size door for each occupant. The Staika’s silicone-impregnated fly—superior in virtually every aspect except initial cost to the polyurethane-coated flies found on most tents—repels rain like a politician shedding campaign promises, and the taut structure, sturdy DAC 10.25mm poles, plentiful stake-out points, and symmetrical footprint combine to create a cocoon that the stiffest and most capricious wind just slides over. While any tent should be staked down whenever possible, the Staika—including the fly and vestibules—is truly freestanding, thus allowing you to pitch it on slickrock, in soft sand, or anywhere secure staking is impossible. (Just make sure you weight it down well, or tie it to a vehicle.) One feature not noted in the original review since proved its value. The tent canopy is not a stressed part of the structure; it hangs freely inside the Staika’s fly. So if you need more room in the vestibule you can unclip one side and draw it in. When foul weather mandates cooking under the vestibule (not recommended; you’ll die; voids the warranty; blah blah), this allows you to create a wide floorless space to keep the stove well away from tent material. For two-person motorcycle touring or minimalist vehicle camping, the Staika offers the peace of mind of knowing that, no matter what the weather, you have a dry, secure haven just a five-minute pitch away. (Jonathan Hanson) hilleberg.com, 425-883-0101

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OVERLAND CONSERVATION

Roseann Hanson

At-home biodiesel production—

professionally

If you’re turned off by the thought of making your own biodiesel because you have images of a garage cluttered up with rumbling, leaking, steampunkish old water heaters and vats of rancid cooking fat (which you have to source by lurking around the backs of fastfood joints in the middle of the night), the Fuel Pod 2 personal automated biodiesel production system will change your mind. The sleek 60-inch-tall unit is just 24 inches in diameter and sports industrial-grade brass and stainless-steel components, as well as a simple but professional control panel. The Fuel Pod

2 uses 110V electricity to turn methanol, lye, tap water, and vegetable oil (new or used) into 14 gallons of pure biodiesel per batch, and can handle up to two batches per day. Unlike homemade old-water-heater-style processors, the Fuel Pod minimizes your exposure to chemicals and fumes, with automated processing and an easy ‘dose pump’ to add the ingredients. The Nevada-based Green Fuels America says their Fuel Pod 2, which retails for $3,995, will make biodiesel for about 70 cents per gallon if using free (used) oil. Given that capital expenditure and operating cost, versus a (very) moderate pump price of $2.20 per gallon of #2 diesel, it would take about 2,700 gallons to offset the initial outlay (or three years of driving 18,000 miles per year at 20 miles per gallon). But the payback of producing your own fuel with sustainable materials is incalculable. myfuelpod.com or greenfuels. co.uk, 866-996-6130

Trash bags made from corn Here’s a great product line that helps make our impact a little lighter: 100-percent biodegradable and compostable bags for trash or toilet systems. This is even more important when traveling through developing countries where municipal waste disposal programs are minimal or non-existent; the least we can do is reduce our first-world trash. BioBags are made from non-genetically modified corn starch, and are widely available at grocery stores, or from Amazon.com. biobagusa.com

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Eco-Overlanding Noteworthy efforts around the globe

Motos against Malaria: Nearly three million people worldwide die each year from malaria—70 percent of them under the age of five. The sad thing is that it’s very treatable and preventable, but only if drugs and simple mosquito nets are available or affordable, which they are not for a majority of people in the worst areas. Most of us are horrified by such statistics and happy to donate money to excellent organizations such as the Against Malaria Foundation, but how many of us would hop on a couple of 200cc motorcycles, load them up in Cape Town with mosquito nets, and ride across Africa, delivering them to poor villages and schools along the way? That’s just what Canadians Todd Lawson and Christina Tottle did in February 2008, with a plan to end in Morocco in 2009. Their trip was epic, at times fraught with drama and a little danger, and many times rewarded by

interactions with the wonderful people they met. We won’t spoil the final story here, as the pair are writing a feature for an upcoming Overland Journal, but you can check out the Against Malaria Foundation, the highly effective organization through which Todd and Christina worked to facilitate their trip. To date, Against Malaria has raised $3.9 million to buy and deliver 895,000 nets; over 381,500 donors have participated thus far, happy that 100 percent of their donated funds buy nets. In addition to delivering nets, the couple raised enough money through pledges for the foundation to purchase a total of 1,334 nets. againstmalaria.com Photo by TodOverland d Lawson Journal

Summer 2009

OVERLAND MEDICINE

Dr. Ed Beggy

The

Third Degree on Burns Field treatment for an injury everyone self-inflicts sooner or later

nyone out there who’s never been burned, please raise your hand. No, I’m not talking about that Nigerian person you sent your bank account information. All of us have been burned at one time or another. From the time we are toddlers until we reach old age, we have innumerable opportunities to touch or grab hot things, stay out in the sun too long, or spill something boiling or caustic on ourselves. The question for us, as we explore off the beaten path, is what to do about serious burns when we are far from home. When does a burn require medical attention, and when can it be handled without? You might not realize that your skin is actually your largest organ. It weighs about 4-5 kg, and has a surface area of about 2 square meters. The skin protects the internal organs from germs and mechanical injury, regulates body heat, preserves body fluids, and provides a sense of touch. Skin varies in thickness in various parts of the body, but is composed

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of two layers, the epidermis (upper layer) and dermis (lower layer). Beneath the dermis is the hypodermis (mostly subcutaneous fat). The epidermis is continuously shedding and being replaced from below. The dermis regulates the growth, nutrition, and repair of the epidermis. As long as the dermis is intact, the skin can repair itself, though scarring can occur. If you look at a burn and see round “spots” scattered all over, this is likely the exposed dermis. Burns are caused by an agent that produces injury to the skin. These causative agents may be thermal (heat or cold), chemical, or radiation (e.g., the sun or electric currents). The depth of the burn—as well as the extent, expressed as the percent of the total body surface area involved, or TBSA—has been used for years to classify the burn and assist in directing treatment and estimating recovery. In Boy Scouts, we were taught that burns were either first-, second-, or third-degree. This is a very simple and useful system for the average person. But as physicians are

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wont to do, that simple system has given way to several wordier and more complex systems. The system I prefer is simple and descriptive: burns are either superficial, partial thickness, or full thickness. Superficial (first-degree) burns are limited to just the epidermis, and are pink to red, and blanch with pressure. This is your typical sunburn. Recovery in a few days with or without treatment is usual with no sequelae (further symptoms) expected. Partial thickness (second-degree) burns are a bit deeper and involve the epidermis and upper levels of the dermis. Typically this burn produces fluid-filled blisters, and can be moderately painful. Sequelae can include scars and contractures (shortening and hardening of muscles, tendons, or other tissues), affecting both appearance and mobility. Extensive burns of this type can result in fluid and electrolyte abnormalities, requiring hospitalization. Full thickness (third-degree) burns are just that: they pass all the way through the epidermis and dermis down into the subcutaneous fat, nerves, soft tissue, and muscles. The wound might be charred black and smell like a barbeque gone bad, or it can be white and waxy, and is often not immediately painful, because the nerve endings have been burned off. These are dangerous burns and will not heal without surgical intervention. The risk of deep infection is high, and scarring with disfigurement is the norm. Depending on the depth of the burn, the location, and surface area involved, full-thickness burns may be fatal. So: What to do if someone in your expedition group is burned beyond a mere, “Ow, #$&*!” First, don’t panic. Keep calm and focused, so you can assess the situation clearly. If the victim is awake and alert, move him away from the source of the burn (if he hasn’t moved already). Remember to keep yourself safe at the same time. Find out what happened; get a good history. Is it a thermal burn or a chemical burn? If a chemical, the burn might be ongoing; the chemical might need to be neutralized. Wipe any visible chemical carefully from the skin with a disposable cloth or paper towel, then flush the area with cool (not cold) water, and remove clothing that might be contaminated. If the clothing is adhering to the burn, leave it, but cut away any excess. Was a flash or flame involved? Are there burns around the face and nose? If so, then consider the possibility that the victim may have inhaled flames or chemical fumes and burned his respiratory tract. Any breathing difficulties, coughing, wheezing, throat swelling, or soot in the mucus, should prompt immediate evacuation to a medical facility. Was high-voltage electricity involved? Internal burns of the muscles and vital organs are a strong possibility, as well as late-onset cardiac arrhythmias (up to three days later). Medical attention is strongly advised. Quickly estimate the extent and severity of the burns. I still use the “Rule of Nines” for adults (children are different). Each of these areas of the body is allotted nine percent of the body surface area: head, arm, front of legs, back of legs, chest, abdomen, upper back, lower back, buttocks, and “all the rest.” For example, a burn involving most of an arm (nine percent) and the chest (nine percent) covers an estimated 18 percent Total Body Surface Area (TBSA). A burn involving less than 10 percent TBSA (or less than two percent full-thickness) can often be handled as an outpatient. Burns of 10 to 20 percent TBSA (or two to five percent full thickness) are

Overland Journal Summer 2009

considered moderate and may require hospitalization. Burns of over 20 percent TBSA (or over five percent full-thickness) are severe and require hospitalization. Burns involving high-voltage electricity, inhalation, circumferential burns (completely encircling a limb or trunk), those involving face, ears, eyes, nose, or joints should be considered severe and require hospitalization. After the initial assessment, a good initial treatment for any level of burn is to flush it with cool water for 10 to 15 minutes. Cooling this way even up to several hours after a burn can reduce burn pain. Administer an analgesic such as acetaminophen (e.g., Tylenol) if needed. Avoid aspirin, as it may promote bleeding. Apply saline-soaked gauze pads if available, or copious amounts of an antibiotic ointment (e.g., Bacitracin) and non-stick gauze pads. In years past we recommended Silvadene, but simple antibiotic ointments work just as well. Wrap loosely and keep the wounds and dressings clean. This treatment can be administered while en route to a hospital if necessary. If you determine that the burns are not life-threatening and can be handled in the field, remove the dressings daily and wash with soap and water. Avoid Betadine or similar solutions, as it may impede wound healing. Replace dressings more often if they become fluidsoaked or dirty. Ruptured blisters may be removed carefully, but leave intact blisters alone. A person with a deep burn should also have a tetanus immunization if it has been more than five years since the last one. And anyone who sends bank information to Nigeria should schedule an immediate psychiatric examination.

RESOURCES remm.nlm.gov/burns.htm mayoclinic.com/health/first-aid-burns/FA00022 firstaid.about.com

There are good reasons why Eezi-Awn is one of the most respected manufacturers of overland equipment. Since its inception 25 years ago, the name Eezi-Awn has been synonymous with quality. From rooftop tents to retractable awnings, Eezi-Awn’s dedication to exceptional service is evident in all the equipment we produce, sell locally, or export to many countries around the world. Eezi-Awn is beyond comparison. Remember that long after the sweetness of price is gone, quality prevails.

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SKILLS

Jonathan Hanson

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Premium Propane Assembling a high-quality LPG cooking and lighting kit Overland Journal Summer 2009

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alk to a hundred different people, and you’ll get a hundred different ideas about what comprises the perfect vehicle-based camp. Some people eschew anything more complex or weighty than a backpacking stove and tent—and in fact view the tent as a necessary evil, to be employed only when toads are actually being strangled, if you know the metaphor. On the opposite end of the spectrum are GXV/Unicat/Fuso owners, whose hard-shell living arrangements in the field are at least as luxurious as those in their homes, and probably better built. More intriguingly, some people obsess on specific aspects of their camps, while virtually ignoring others. I know guys who sleep in Tent Cots and carry nothing personal-hygiene-related beyond a toothbrush, yet cook with Henckel’s knives and All-Clad pots over a full U-shaped Snow Peak Iron Grill table set. Need to borrow a pinch of saffron? No problem; right there in the spice case. Yeah, the Pelican 1450. Others fixate on the perfect camp bedroom. Nothing less than full standing height in the tent will suffice, and perish the thought of sleeping on the floor. A cot with a mattress is de rigueur, as is a real feather pillow. Next to the cot will be a night table from Blue Ridge or Byer, and bare feet swung out of bed will land on a little Oriental throw rug. Lastly, there are those for whom the camp bathroom is the ultimate expression of the perfect camp. They’ll debate the merits of competing pop-up shower/toilet enclosures the way others discuss Land Rovers versus Land Cruisers. Do I sound like I’m making fun? Not a chance. I’m perfectly happy camping with minimal equipment when sea kayaking or backpacking, but I see no reason to forego extra comfort when I’m in a vehicle with 80 cubic feet of storage. Unfortunately, my own obsession swirls chimerically somewhere around a British officer’s bush camp in the Kenya Protectorate, circa 1900: canvas wall tent, campaign desk, Abercrombie and Fitch folding tub, etc. etc. I don’t need a Land Cruiser; I need 20 porters and a batman. Until I can afford that, I make do with a sort of pukka synecdoche: a tripolina chair here, a kerosene lantern there, a folding canvas sink, Samuel Smith’s IPA in the Engel. For the next few pages we’re going to obsess on the basic elements of a pukka propane kitchen system: fuel supply, stove, and lighting. Unless you’re willing to cook over a wood fire, food preparation in camp is going to require some sort of fossil-derived fuel. For decades, white gas was the standard for the ubiquitous Coleman stoves and lanterns, and it is still the most efficient in terms of both cost and heat output in joules per kilogram. Many backpacking stoves today employ canisters filled with propane/butane mixes, to balance heat output with low-temperature performance. A few larger stoves use canisters as well. But propane is the choice for a majority of overlanders. Liquefied Petroleum Gas, or LPG, is a three-carbon alkane (an alkane is a chemical compound containing only carbon and hydrogen), derived from other petroleum products during processing. Propane is a gas at room temperature and all the way down to around minus 40 degrees, but it liquifies readily when compressed, simplifying storage and transport. While LPG is on the low end of the camp-fuel scale in terms of heat output, it’s only marginally behind white gas or butane, and its ease of use, clean-burning properties, and widespread availability have made it a favorite. Propane is easy to carry in quantities sufficient for extended journeys. Its only real disadvantages are that it will not vaporize readily below roughly zero degrees Fahrenheit (when no sane person would be camping anyway, right?), and also that the gas is heavier than air, and can be hazardous if allowed to pool. (This is rarely an issue in a vehicle, but represents a serious danger in a boat, where leaking gas settles in the bilge. Propane-equipped boats utilize alarms to warn of leaks.) You can get along okay with commonly available, disposable one-pound canisters. But the canisters, in addition to being wasteful, don’t last very long (although I’m testing a kit that allows home recharging). A refillable bulk steel tank is better on both counts, but steel tanks are heavy for their capacity, and difficult to secure properly. I went looking for better ways, and was surprised at what I found. Overland Journal Summer 2009

Ragasco composite LPG cylinder No one believes this thing the first time they see it. A transparent propane tank? Made from fiberglass? That’s nice—excuse me while I move my truck a little farther away from your camp. Actually, not only is the Ragasco tank perfectly safe, it’s demonstrably safer than your old steel tank. Ragasco’s tests show that, when exposed to a large external fire, the propane in a composite cylinder will burn off in a controlled manner, while under the same circumstances a steel tank will explode. The main Ragasco.com website has a video that shows the latter in spectacular fashion. In fact, after watching it you’ll be tempted to turn the tables on doubters. Oh, you’re using a steel tank? That’s nice. Excuse me while I move my truck . . . Of course, catastrophic fires and truck-demolishing explosions are pretty rare at most overlanding cookouts I’ve attended. Where the Ragasco shines is in day-to-day practicality. First, this 11.5-liter tank—the smallest in the line—weighs a scant 7.5 pounds dry. Filled, it weighs about the same as an empty steel tank of the same capacity. It’s easier to handle and easier to secure. The molded plastic protective casing is quiet and extremely impact-resistant, the base has no sharp edges to mar flooring or amputate toes, and the carrying handles are rounded and comfortable. It’s corrosion-proof inside and out, UV-resistant, and should significantly outlast a standard steel tank. Finally—if it matters to you kitchen-obsessed campers—the Ragasco comes in pretty colors and can even be printed with corporate logos. But the best thing about the Ragasco tank is that you’ll never again wonder how much propane you have left. The inside tank is not perfectly clear, but it’s transparent enough that a brief jiggle allows you to see the level of liquid propane inside. This feature also enables you to be sure your tank is filled to capacity when you buy from an unknown supplier and can’t watch the process. I noticed one small disadvantage to the Ragasco, a corollary of its construction: If you like to use the common 30-inch tall distribution tree to feed several propane appliances, with a lantern on top, the lightweight tank makes a less stable base once it’s near empty, especially in a windy campsite. You can secure the assembly to your kitchen table with a guyline, or use a flexible supply line to the lantern and hang it.

$140

I also found a two-piece distribution tree at Camping World. With the upper half left off, you can mount the lantern just 15 inches above the tank, greatly enhancing stability. Set this assembly on your tailgate or table and you’re ready to go. ragasco.com, lpgastanks.com, 800-823-6677 (Note: lpgastanks.com is offering a 10-percent discount to Overland Journal readers.)

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Worthington aluminum propane cylinder

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As a temporarily lapsed small-boat sailor, I know that ship’s chandleries are some of the best places to look for high-quality overlanding equipment. After all, the consequences are significant if an important bit of kit fails on you 3,000 miles out in the Southern Ocean (not that I’ve been there; Sea of Cortez chubascos are the limit of my heavyweather experience). And a surprising amount of sailing gear translates superbly for overland use. Witness the Worthington aluminum propane tanks, to which I was alerted by Chris van Dyke, an ex-Valiant 40 sailor now navigating terra firma via a nautically-engineered Toyota Tacoma. The 5.3-liter (or six-pound) capacity Worthington tank combines all the obvious qualities you’d expect in an aluminum tank: it’s very light (eight pounds), rust-proof, and won’t spark. The interior can’t develop the scaling that can sometimes clog a steel tank. It should last forever, at least as far as your brief time on earth is concerned. But it’s the tall, skinny configuration of this tank that attracted me as much as its construction. For me, the limitation to gear capacity in a vehicle generally ends up being a matter of floor space rather than total volume. You can only stack stuff so high, after all, before it becomes unwieldy and impossible to strap down securely, and a double layer of gear guarantees that the item you need will be on the bottom, no matter how carefully you planned. The Worthington cylinder occupies a scant six-inch diameter circle of cargo area—it’s no bigger around than a fat fire extinguisher. Yet it holds the equivalent of six one-pound propane canisters (larger—but fatter—sizes are available). If you have absolutely no room left inside, it would add little windage strapped horizontally on a roof rack—and even roofrackophobe Tom Sheppard could hardly complain of the weight it would add up there. (Just remember that the cylinder needs to be upright to use.) I found myself eyeing the Worthington cylinder and musing on how perfect it would be to come up with a hard-mount arrangement. Then I had an idea. In my shop was an old CO2 tank for inflating tires, on a sturdy clamp bracket with a roll cage mount. The CO2 tank was a little larger in diameter, but . . . Sure enough, by taking the adjuster on the clamp all the way down, the bracket gripped the Worthington cylinder securely. Now I can mount the cylinder high enough on my FJ40’s rear roll cage upright to leave room underneath for other gear, while keeping the tank easily accessible and utterly solid even in a rollover. With the roll cage adapter

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$165

removed, the bracket will mount to many flat surfaces, even externally on a swingaway rear bumper/rack. And of course the tank pops out instantly for refilling or using away from the vehicle. While there’s no way to directly monitor the remaining propane in a metal tank, the indirect method of comparing empty tank weight versus total weight works easily with this cylinder, because the whole thing is so light. A 15-pound-capacity scale is adequate. And the last best thing about an aluminum propane tank? If you ever buy that 40-foot sloop and take off on a global circumnavigation, you’ll be ahead one piece of gear. westmarine.com, 800-262-8464

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Partner Steel 16-inch two-burner aluminum stove $250

We’ve covered Partner Steel stoves before—one took our Editor’s Choice in the Winter, 2007 issue—but in any discussion of a highquality propane system the name is bound to come up again. There’s simply no more reliable or bombproof propane stove on the market. Partner Steel has been around since 1947, making large things (“large” as in, for example, bridges) from, yes, steel. What began as a minor sideline making aluminum equipment for river runners turned into its own business, thanks to the indestructible construction of the raft frames, dry boxes, stoves, even coffee pots they produce. This model, the company’s second smallest, weighs a solid 12.8 pounds despite being about 90 percent aluminum. Measure some of the parts and you’ll understand why. The body, lid, and even the windscreen wings are made from .080-inch aluminum, joined by the most beautiful welds you’re ever likely to see. The top rim of the body is doubled in thickness by the bracket that forms the grill shelf, making a lip well over an eighth of an inch thick. I stood on the closed stove and

it didn’t deflect; you could probably drive a wheel onto it to gain a little working clearance under your vehicle for a field repair. This stove fits nicely into the Zarges K470 #5 case we use as a kitchen box. (If you commonly cook with two large pots at once, you’ll want the 18-inch-wide version of the same stove.) I immediately noticed a modification on this example resulting from our 2007 review: The company has added an extra grill bar over each burner, significantly increasing stability for small pots and stovetop espresso makers. Bravo. partnersteel.com, 208-233-2371

Coleman Northstar Lantern

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$45

This is the 21st century. We landed a man on the moon 40 years ago, and more recently sent Gene Roddenberry’s ashes into space just for the heck of it. Why can’t someone make a propane lantern that doesn’t need a fiddly, fragile mantle to produce light? After Brunton introduced their little Liberty canister backpacking lantern, which employs a platinum screen as its incendescent light source, I expected mantled lanterns to be obsolete within months. Apparently there are other issues with the technology, because white gas and propane lanterns are still stuck with the old ways. However, Coleman has at least addressed the fiddly part. The Northstar’s mantle dispenses with the little ties that were always such a pain—it’s tubular, and attaches with preformed wire clips top and bottom. Snap each wire over its connection, twist, and you’re finished. It might not be any less fragile, but changing it out when the inevitable happens is a lot quicker. And, of course, the light produced is bright and white (unlike the yellowtinged light of the Brunton), and will last up to 11 hours on one pound of fuel. In other respects the Northstar shines. The piezo ignition works consistently on the first or second try. In common with even the least expensive Coleman lanterns, the ventilator is porcelainized to resist heat; it won’t peel like a painted ventilator. A wire guard around the Northstar’s globe is useful to ward off casual knocks, and you can get either a soft or hard case—either of which will help protect that mantle until Coleman brings us another leap in technology. coleman.com, 800-835-3278

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OVERLAND CHEF

Roseann Hanson

Beyond tinned meats and jerky

Preparing quality meats for long trips

We once tried going vegetarian, as idealistic 20-somethings. It lasted about three days. We’re carnivores, especially me. And especially on trips where I’m burning a lot of calories. But on day 14 of a long overland trip without fresh-food resupply, any carne has generally been canned or jerked. For the former, poultry is relatively palatable, but tinned beef is usually a gelatinous lump reminiscent of dog food. This past winter we drove along the inland coast of the Sea of Cortez to Bahia de los Angeles, and then took a fishing boat to one of the islands, where we camped for 10 days while helping an anthropologist friend with research. It was the perfect opportunity to try out a method for drying meat for a non-resupply trip (we had to bring everything with us from Arizona, since fresh food, even meat, is not all that fresh in LA Bay). Our friend Diane Boyer shared her method for cooking, drying, and storing ground beef; our job would be to test out reconstituting and using the ground chuck in recipes. And recently I tested out salt cod, a very old staple that has fallen out of favor in the New World but is still an important protein source for much of the planet. I also like that the dried chuck could be made from organic, lowfat meat, and the cod is wild-caught and sold by a small Canadian fishing co-op.

Starters & Drinks ~ Ice-cold Tecate and limes, fresh vegetables and salsa dip Dinner ~ Ground beef on flour tortillas with black beans, squash, cheese, and cabbage Dessert ~ Seared watermelon and orange blossom honey

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Please visit the Overland Journal blog at overlandjournal.com/blog for complete recipes from this issue’s menu.

Drying and storing ground beef

Yield: 3 pounds meat makes approx. 18 ounces or 4.5 cups dried | Time: 8 hours | Equipment: Home oven, cookie sheets | Adapted from Diane Boyer and The Hungry Hiker's Book of Good Cooking by Gretchen McHugh (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982) 3 pounds organic extra-lean ground chuck or round

Cook the meat in a heavy skillet in batches; break it up thoroughly with your spatula, the smaller and more uniform the bits the better. Pour off all fat; drain on paper towels. Spread the meat in one layer on cookie sheets and dry in an oven (140 - 150 F) for 6-8 hours. Cool, and seal in vacuum bags for longest life. We used a FoodSaver Vac 750. Overland Journal Summer 2009

Using dried meats in camp: For five people, we used three cups of dried meat and added three cups of water, then simmered covered for about 20 minutes (keep testing until meat is tender; you may need to add more water). We then seasoned the meat and added black beans, sautéed onions, and squash, for soft tacos. The meat was very tasty, and with sufficient simmering, you couldn’t tell it wasn’t fresh; we’ve since used it in stews and lasagna. Recently I found dried salt cod (called baccala in Spain) at a local market; it’s pricey,

about $18 a pound, but the pieces are large and don’t smell at all fishy. You soak them for 24 hours, changing the water several times. It’s delicious in classic recipes like baccala a la Florentine (simmered with wine, tomatoes, and garlic) or our favorite, moquequa, a Brazilian fish stew with potatoes, green peppers, and tomatoes simmered in coconut milk. Share your menus, recipes, and overland cooking tips with us at editor@overlandjournal.com.

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CLASSIC KIT

Christophe Noel

The Woodman’s Pal From the woods to Guadalcanal to Desert Storm, and back to the woods

n 1941, a Swiss immigrant and polymath named Frederick Ehrsam put the final touches on a tool that had taken ten years of his life to design. Like some Franken-knife, Ehrsam’s invention was part hatchet, part machete, with a pinch of sickle and a hint of shovel, and a knuckle guard that gave it a look reminiscent of a pirate’s cutlass. Ehrsam envisioned his tool as a versatile implement for foresters and outdoorsmen, and christened it the Woodman’s Pal. Indeed, the Woodman’s Pal caught on quickly and sold briskly. But history soon stepped in. The U.S. military, facing a new war on jungle islands in the South Pacific, recognized the genius in Ehrsam’s design and rushed it into military service—where it was to remain for the next five decades. In a world of endless technological marvels, humans still rely every day on simple cutting tools for endless tasks, from shaving to opening boxes, from cutting rope to chopping firewood to carving a turkey. And, of course, many have been pressed into service in battle, from the earliest bronze swords to 20thcentury bayonets. Some cutting tools are simple and ubiquitous, others, through their brilliance of design and storied history, have been elevated to legendary status. In myth there is Excalibur. In recent history, the Bowie knife is one, the KABAR another. The Woodman’s Pal certainly deserves legendary status as well. With the Pacific Campaign in full, desperate swing, production of the military-issue Woodman’s Pal fell to Victor Tool Company of Reading, Pennsylvania. Fitting military service, the name was changed from the charming original to “U.S.A. Spec 71-591B, Stock No. 6Q60114B”—available at your nearest PX. Other military designations soon followed: the much handier LC-14-B, and the much more evocative Jungle Fighting Knife. The first to use the tool in military service were the Marines and the Army Signal Corps, who put the tool into action clearing brush in thick jungles such as those on Guadalcanal.

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magnetic metal, and even a sporting version intended to appeal to the growing civilian market. Those modifications were short lived deviations from the original tool, which continued to gain popularity with G.I.s and civilians alike. The civilian market grew exponentially in the years following WWII, as hunters, campers, gardeners, and genuine woodsmen continued to use their beloved tools, again known simply as the Woodman’s Pal. Then, at a time when most veterans of the Second World War were raising families and painting picket fences, duty called again, this time in Vietnam. A new conflict brought with it a new name, as the Jungle Fighting Knife became the Type IV Survival Axe, the main component in the Type IV Survival Tool Kit. This time the tool was standard issue survival equipment for many aircraft crews, mostly

From start to finish, a single tool passes through 23

stages of production, each one completed by hand.

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The LC-14-B came with several field manuals. One covered basic tips on use, care, and sharpening. Another outlined the subtleties of hand-to-hand fighting. The combat manual suggested that an attacker with a rifle-mounted bayonet was at a serious disadvantage since the Jungle Fighting Knife could be “handled with lightning speed,” and went on to advise that a good target would be the attacker’s closest appendages, his hands. By 1944, Victor Tool Company was printing a 66-page color instructional booklet, complete with a series of testimonials. It would seem that between 1941 and 1944, Frederick Ehrsam’s ingenious tool had won over more than a few fans. One such fan was PFC Henry Luke, who in 1943 wrote his own testimonial: “Besides my rifle and compass, it is my most valuable possession and I cannot see how I could ever get along without it over here.” Similar accolades would echo through the coming decades as LC-14-B continued to make way in the military. In those early years, Victor Tool Company tried a few variations, including one with a serrated blade, another made of nonOverland Journal Summer 2009

those in helicopters. As a survival tool primarily stowed in seat packs and small kits, the overall length was shortened by nearly two inches and the weight reduced by a couple of ounces, but otherwise it remained unchanged. The ever reliable Type IV Survival Axe stayed in the military’s inventory through Operation Desert Storm. With military service concluded—for the time being—the Woodman’s Pal joined us once again. These days, it is manufactured by Pro Tool Industries, a family-owned business in Boyertown, Pennsylvania—not far from where Frederick Ehrsam produced the prototype. Ehrsam’s legacy continues through meticulous manufacturing with home-grown materials. The Woodman’s Pal of today would make Ehrsam and PFC Henry Luke proud. As it was in the beginning, a Woodman’s Pal is a hefty piece of craftsmanship. The blade is 1/8th-inch-thick, SAE1075 coldrolled spring steel, hardened to Rockwell C47. Most will never appreciate what that means until they sink the blade deep into the meat of a rogue tree trunk or completely through a wrist-sized limb. As stated in the original

manuals, the pigskin leather grip stays cool in warm weather and warm in cold weather. The grip has the added benefit of deadening the sting of vibrations as the tool strikes its target. From start to finish, a single tool passes through 23 stages of production, each one completed by hand. The initial phase is the blanking of the blade under a 150-ton press; the final stage is a hands-on inspection. The result of all this attention to legacy and manufacturing detail can only be appreciated with a Woodman’s Pal firmly planted in one’s hand. Few chopping tools have the balance of a Woodman’s Pal, and virtually none have the versatility. With the first swing, the tool feels like an old friend—a pal. Used as a machete, the blade slices through small branches and brush. Employed as a hatchet, even arm-sized limbs can be dispatched in minutes. The sickle hook slices brush, grass, and limbs up to an inch thick, while the blunt end can be used for digging and trenching. As is true for all good companions, a Woodman’s Pal will last the ages, particularly since Pro Tool Industry offers a comprehensive restoration service. Nearly 70 years have passed since the first Woodman’s Pals began finding their way into the hands of civilians and servicemen, and many of those original tools are still in active use, passed down from father to son. While most of us will never need to clear a landing zone on a remote South Pacific island, much less fend off a bayonet attack (the original manuals are still available, just in case), we might have firewood to fetch, or brush to clear from a trail. Or maybe we just want to possess a legendary cutting tool without having to pull it from a lump of stone. woodsmanspal.com, 800-708-5191

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To be fair, the majority of Three Points residents are merely honest working-class folk on limited incomes, with more pressing priorities than a spotless yard. We count several of them as friends. (And, after all, I’ve got a metallurgically challenged Land Rover waiting attention in my own yard.) But read the Tucson news regularly and it’s apparent there’s plenty of no-lifeguard-at-the-gene-pool goings-on there, too. One side road is notorious among our local sheriff ’s deputies, who won’t even turn down it without S.W.A.T. backup. There are enough meth labs to rot your teeth if you just drive by downwind. I remember passing a local school bus stop on my way to town at dawn one morning, where one of the fathers was waiting with the kids, wearing a greasy wife-beater T-shirt, baggy shorts, and flip-flops, and puffing on a cigarette. As I went past, I admonished myself, thinking, Hey, at least he’s at the bus stop with his kids. Then he took a sip of his beer . . . In any case, Three Points provides a virtually impregnable prefilter for any disenchanted white-collar city people who might otherwise stumble out our way looking for a little slice of desert heaven on which to build a 3,000-square-foot hideaway. The final gauntlet is a Road Warrior-esque compound about two miles north of us, which commonly flies a confederate flag on a tall pole out front. There’s actually a wide spot carved in the road right there, where the few GX470s and 330is that make it that far finally give up and do quiet U-turns, so as not to attract any attention. (One of our friends who visits now and then used to have on his truck a bumper sticker with a Confederate flag on it overlaid with a circle and slash, and the words, “You lost. Get over it.” He took it off.) And how, you’re asking by now, does this dovetail with Overland Journal? The answer is on page 41, where you’ll read our review of recovery kits. As you can imagine, many of the vehicles around Three Points suffer from inadequate preventive maintenance budgets. As a result, many of them regularly limp home, or fail to make it at all under their own power. And these vehicles are unlikely to be equipped with one of our reviewed recovery kits, the price of a couple of which approximate the Blue Book retail of the vehicle they’d be called on to recover. In fact, most of the vehicles lack any sort of dedicated recovery (or repair) gear at all. Thus, improvisation rules the day. Sometimes the fix is simple. There was the guy who got into a rightof-way altercation with an old enemy—his across-the-road neighbor— and decided to up the level of aggression with a few well-placed shots from his pistol. Unfortunately his level of excitement was high enough that he fired several of those shots through his own windshield. No worries—he simply kicked out the rest of the glass, put on his sunglasses, and drove home (ears ringing painfully, I should think) to await the S.W.A.T. team. But when drivetrain trouble hits, assistance is called for. Witness the Chevy truck I spotted while I was out on a bicycle ride, being pushed up a steep, rocky, low-range hill by another Chevy truck. The front bumper of the Chevy doing the pushing made solid contact with the pushee’s rear bumper about 30 percent of the time. The rest was grinding and screeching as the bumpers twisted and rode over or under each other and into tailgate or grille, or slamming as they lost

Overland Journal Summer 2009

connection altogether by one, two, or three feet, then impacted again. From inside both trucks I could hear maniacal laughter. Generally, that sort of thing is frowned upon by Three Points professionals, who prefer towing. But again, purpose-made tow ropes are a waste of funds when you can press alternatives into service. My wife and I have developed something of a sport identifying the common household materials used to haul broken vehicles hither and thither. It’s challenging when you’re going the opposite direction, and only get a glance at something doubled back and forth about five times between the vehicles: “Rope from a come-along?” “No way; too thin. Parachute cord.” It’s easier when you pass going the same way, and can gawk somewhat at leisure: “Baling wire.” “Uh, yeah. Step on it.” Or: “Bedsheets!” “Right, but I couldn’t make out the pattern. Star Wars or Battlestar Galactica?” I am not making up any of these. But it was just last year that we handed out the grand prize for multi-purpose Three Points recovery gear. Heading home one afternoon, we saw ahead of us the telltale procession of two vehicles way too close together, still booking along at the speed limit or a bit. We pulled up, then alongside. I looked at the umbilical: orange, about 3/8ths-inch in diameter, doubled over bumper to bumper and tied with a decent square knot. Then I saw the three-prong plug dangling below the knot. “Is that a . . . ?” Roseann asked. “Yep. An extension cord.” As we went past the tow vehicle, the guy driving waved cheerily at us. And took a sip of his beer.

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TAIL LAMP

Jonathan Hanson

Recovery Techniques in Three Points Where “tow strap” has only vague connotations

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One side road is notorious among our local sheriff ’s deputies, who won’t even turn down it without S.W.A.T. backup.

Overland Journal Summer 2009

hen my wife and I were lucky enough to discover and buy the remote 20acre property where we live, bordered on two sides by public land, we did so with our eyes open. On the side opposite the public land, between our place and the rural communities to the north, lies what appears to be untouched Sonoran Desert, but which is in fact a network of surveyed and subdivided two- to four-acre lots, the remnants of a failed 1970s development hawked on television at the time by no less a celebrity than Forrest Tucker of “F-Troop” fame, who exhorted urban Tucson residents to “Come on out and be my neighbor.” Remarkably few did, perhaps holding out until one of the cast of Gilligan’s Island or even the Love Boat bought in as well, so the development languished and its graded dirt roads sprouted creosote and prickly pear. Nevertheless, we knew it would only be a matter of time before urbanites yearning to breathe free of Tucson’s now half-million residents discovered those lots, available in the 21st century at 1970s prices. Once they

started buying and building and bringing in mains power—currently seven miles away— then complaining about the dust and the distance to a WalMart Neighborhood Market, our idyllic and quiet (except for when we shoot off the back porch) existence would be over. At least, we figured, our property would then be worth millions, and we’d sell out and just keep moving on past where most people were willing to be. Remarkably, there’s virtually no sign of this happening yet, seven years on. And I know why: It’s thanks to the community through which one has to drive to reach our end-of-the-road valley and its scattered reclusive enclave of writers, photographers, vintage tractor restorers, and Olympic-class fencing coaches (no kidding). The community is called Three Points, after the nearby spot where U.S. Highway 286 splits off Highway 86. Three Points is a hardscrabble, unincorporated conglomeration of mostly mobile homes, with scabrous mutts chained in the yards and, if I may continue to alliterate, metallurgically challenged Mercuries rotting out back. Continued on page 126

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