I just sent this out as an e-mail and I thought I maight as well post it here too...

To all the 4WD Homies,
 
OK guys, my buddy Tony of Fall Crawl fame (the guy that smashes and bangs through our rock crawl course with their cut up, camo painted, bone stock Toyotas and Isuzus) is putting together something worth talking about for the weekend of the 20th of April.
 
The biggest part of the event will be an overland scavenger hunt with between 100-200 miles of secondary unimproved dirt farm roads and backwater routes through a big block of BFE North-Central Montana farm and prairie sagebrush country between I-15 to the west, Hwy 223 to the East, Hwy 2 (the hi-line) to the north and Great Falls as the south boundary. This area is humungous and has almost no pavement. There is an abandoned radar base that's worth seeing by itself out there that will be one of the stops, ferry crossings, the falls and the dams on the missouri, lots of pretty cool country.  Many of these secondardy roads are "impassable when wet" and this will be April so they are bound to be wet. Ever heard of gumbo? That's the stuff.
 
Some of the things to be scavenged in Tony's own words are:  "Must secure at least 1 gopher/ground squirrel, a stone from the Marias, a head of wheat, a piece of Sage brush, selected colored rocks that we place earlier and self photos with your vehicle at selected points."
 
 
He will require us to navigate through this area with a list of predetermined GPS waypoints and take digital photos to prove we all made it to each of the points. This will not be a race but there will probably be some consideration for time in your final score .  We will be on public and private roads with some more challenging low speed 4WD routes mixed here and there. Then we plan to all end up at the same place, either at Tony's north of Great Falls, the ORV park at Vaughn or maybe both for some 4x4 skill challenges and a typical 4x4 Trials course or "Rock Crawl" of some sort.
 
The best way I can describe this is an endurance desert race, but in the mud and possibly slush, with 4x4 games and a rock crawl at the end. There will probably be some sort of prizes involved if I can do anything about it too... The vehicle will have to be able to do it all from hauling ass on dirt roads for hours on end to decently technical terrain and be legal enough to appear on public roads and also be able to carry camp for the weekend. All the while we will have to keep our heads scewed on enough to navigate through a bunch of unknowns.
 
If you are interested let me know via e-mail...
 
permafrostco@3rivers.net