4-WD Events 1997

16-17/8-1997
Terrain Touring, Chiefland
Enköping, Sweden.

This was my second off-road meeting. We had lots of fun, but only for one day.

After 1.5 hours driving Thomas (my co-driver) and I, came to Chiefland Bar at 9:45am.
Around 60 4WD cars had joined up and at 10:00 we drove in a convoy to a military training field a few miles away.

The field offered driving alternatives for every 4WD mind. Forest, sand, mudholes. Even a military training track with man-made obstacles.

Mudholes

Next thing to try was the mudholes!

Thomas thought he had to pep-talk me the hole day to get me into those mudholes, but that wasn't necessary. Mud is good for the skin they say, so down we went.

I think my Willys is a little to expensive to drown in the deepest mudholes so we skipped the deepest one. But there where plenty of other medium-sized mudholes to make the jeep and ourselves dirty. We had lots of fun and even got ourselves pictured by a Swedish offroad magazine.

We took a little pause and watched other crazy friends drowning their cars in the mudholes. One yellow Volvo "valp" with a trailer! got stuck in the deepest hole. The axle on the trailer where also driving so it was a 6WD vehicle.
He managed to winch himself up of the hole without any "external" help. Nice car, and fun people!

Off-Road Orienteering

The sponsors (Bridgestone) had arranged an orienteering around the field with nine questions.

Thomas and I went for a ride to see if we could find the questions and answer them. We found the questions alright, but had a few errors so we didn't win anything.

We where the first to complete the orienteering, so at least Thomas and I think we won something. :-)

Incidents

Two cars overturned during the first day.

One Range Rover with four (wild :-) guys overturned in a steep slope. Luckily they didn't hurt themselves. The Range Rover got help from a Hummer to get back on the wheels, and they could continue their wild driving in the mudholes. Those guys where crazy! :-)

Another man overturned with his original Willys and he got stuck with his leg under the steering wheel. Lots of people assisted and turned it back so he could come loose. That was scary because he could have hurt himself really bad. He was shocked but could walk on the leg so at least is wasn't broken. An X-ray would be appropriate because he could have some fractures in the leg.

More pictures...

On the way home...

After 70 kilometers of highway driving we came to a stop-sign and I discovered that my clutch was broken!

The pedal went to the floor, but the clutch didn't work. We turned aside and checked if there where something we could do, but it wasn't. So we headed home (through the town) without a clutch. That was a little tricky but we managed without to many red-sign-passes. :-)

When I write this it is Sunday morning 10am, and the still functional offroaders and now heading for the military field again for a second day of fun, mud and joy.
Myself is heading towards the garage for a day under my jeep with no-fun, mud and oil. :-(

Thanks!

Special thanks to:

Chiefland Bar for the food and service.

Military responsible at S1 Enköping for letting us use their training field.
Peter Öjerskog for putting it together.

Bridgestone for sponsoring.

All offroad friends that filled my day with fun and joy.

See you next year!

/Göran