One Life ... Live It: Defender Trophy 2026 - Prologue
When I was a kid my dad would come home once a month from the grocery store with a copy of 4WD & Sport Utility Magazine. And every so often its pages were graced with images of men and Sandglow yellow Land Rovers mired in muck as they struggled through some far-flung jungle. This was the Camel Trophy, the “Olympics of 4-Wheel Drive” which pitted man and machine against the elements in the most remote parts of the world from the Amazon to Borneo to the Australian Outback. For a kid in elementary school and early Jr. High, this stuff was legendary. I’d cut out the magazine pictures and put them on my bedroom wall and locker door at school.
I wanted to do it, to experience the “Ultimate Challenge”. It epitomized the idea of adventure in my mind. But by the time I got my driver’s license in 1998 and started really heading out into the backcountry on my own in the early 2000’s, Camel Trophy was no more. Land Rover pulled out after ’98 and the 2000 event (in boats!) was its final outing. So, before I was even old enough to apply, the event that had fueled much of my passion for 4-wheeling had passed into history.
I’ve spent the next quarter century fully engrossed in the world of off-roading. I’d been a trail official at the Moab Easter Jeep Safari, become a Tread Lightly! Master Trainer, taught off-road ethics at Overland Expo, and ran my own overland tour company all while getting out with friends and family exploring the wilds of the Western US. In the summer of 2025 a friend forwarded me a story saying that Land Rover was reviving the Camel Trophy as a new event called the Defender Trophy. At first, I was skeptical, how could they recreate something as epic as that. I didn’t really think I had a shot, here I was an out of shape dad in his mid-40’s with a desk job and zero social media presence (this is a marketing exercise after all). But, One Life … Live It and all that and in the end I figured this was as close as I’d ever get to my childhood fantasy and applied.
In mid-January of this year, I got an e-mail telling me that I had been selected to participate in the North American Qualifying for Defender Trophy in Mission, British Columbia. I was dumbfounded. I’d made the cut!
But… now what? I was being “sponsored” by Land Rover Downtown Salt Lake, but they really had no information about the event entailed. So, I scoured the World Wide Web for any and all information I could find. The South African and Japanese Qualifiers had happened in the fall, and there were plenty of social media posts documenting what those events looked like. And what I saw was not encouraging.
It looked like a Spartan Race with some driving sprinkled in. Did I mention that I was out of shape? Easily in the worst shape of my life. Which meant that I needed to hit the gym which is not my favorite place. But if I hoped to be competitive, or more importantly not feel completely wrecked while there, it was needed. And it absolutely paid off later.
On the driving aspect, I knew I was solid, but I needed to familiarize myself with the L663 Defender 110. Land Rover Downtown Salt Lake committed to lending me a Defender 110 on a couple of weekends. For the first weekend in late February, I coordinated with some friends and took a beautiful green 110 out to Little Moab. It was a great opportunity to learn the in’s and outs of the Terrain Response system and push the limits of the vehicle as best I could with the street tires it came equipped with. We also put together a few exercises based on what we’d observed from the other qualifiers like the Auto Test, Ring Test and a road building task.
A month later I worked with Joel at Liberty Offroad Recovery Training to refresh and sharpen my winch and Hi-Lift jack skills. He put together a great set of timed tests to mimic the pressure that I’d be under at the Defender Trophy and proved to be a great real world training experience.
Along with hitting the gym and my weekends with the 110, I was reacquainting myself with compass and map orienteering, something I really hadn't done since Boy Scouts!. My friend Chris and I headed up into the mountains and worked on bearings and triangulation to route find. For decades I’ve been using a GPS exclusively for all my trip planning, so it was super fun and great to get back to basics.
The organizers told us we could only bring one bag with all the gear we thought we’d need in it. With it being mid-April in the mountains of BC, that could mean packing for snow, rain, or sun. Who knew, and the forecast kept changing as the event got closer. I figured just a typical spring camping load was what I needed, but my wife wisely commented, “pack for the worst conditions you can imagine.” So, I packed it all, which made my bag felt enormous. But you’d rather have it than not.
Then, seemingly all of a sudden, the big day was upon me and I boarded my plane to Vancouver.
When I arrived at my hotel I met up with a few competitors I knew from my Overland Expo days, Kelly and Grace Howard out of Tucson; and a gentleman I connected with online named Shaun Mabe out of Salem-Winston, NC. The four of us grabbed dinner and talked about potential strategies for the tasks we’d be facing the next few days. After dinner we all hit the sack early.