Ultimate Adventure? What the heck is that? If you missed reading about our inaugural event in the Feb. 2000 issue, you probably have no clue. The idea is to take a bunch of qualified wheelers and go on a week-long road trip, with tough trails between the days on asphalt. Some people say we have the best jobs in the world, and if this were all we did, they'd be right. We started the Ultimate Adventure as a way to have some 4x4 fun while taking a few friends along with us. The concept remained the same this year, with a bunch of road miles interspersed with great trails, and a great group of people who could really wheel.
Our agenda this year was the Pacific Northwest, starting at the Rubicon in Northern California, traipsing three days to the Shoestring/Kaner trails in Washington, and culminating on the Bitch Trail on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada. More than 1,200 miles were clocked on our rigs, and that doesn't count Trent McGee of Superlift, who spun a total of 6,192 miles driving from Louisiana and back in a '97 TJ. The rules were fairly simple: no trailers on the trip, the show must go on, and no whiners.
We hand-selected 19 rigs based on these ideals, and we hoped everybody could make the entire trip. This eclectic bunch was made up of veterans of the first trip, industry friends, and some local club members and readers. We even had the following companies on board as official sponsors in the following categories: Title Sponsor, Performance Products; Official Suspension, Tuff Country; Official Tire, Mickey Thompson; Official Wheel, Centerline; Official Winch, Warn; Official Hub, Warn. A video will be available (see page 17 for more information), and yes, you can see the whole event on TV (Fox Sports East and West, Comcast Cable Network Southeast, and Action Sports Network; check your local listings).
Preparations for next year's Ultimate Adventure are already underway, and we expect it to be better than this year's, if that's even possible. We started as a group of 4x4 nuts that barely knew each other and came back a cohesive unit willing to take on more, and we had a great time doing it. Check out what a blast we had, and keep reading future issues to see how you can be selected to go on next year's Ultimate Adventure III.