July 13, 2022 – USA: The fifth Weekly Challenge of the Nomad Overland Virtual Adventure Rally tests teams on their knowledge of vehicle recovery “best practices.” While some of the questions are simple knowledge-checks about gear and procedures, there are also scenarios that require competitors to make a “stuck assessment” and then recommend a course of action. In some cases there can be more than one right answer, so the teams might need to be able to explain their reasoning.
The Recovery Basics Challenge covers simple winching operations and tool choices as well as more complex situations that require competitors to understand concepts such as “resistance load” and “mire factor,” and be able to identify the weakest point in a rigging setup.
The Weekly Challenges are one of the four pillars of the Nomad Overland Virtual Adventure Rally and competitors can earn up to 100 points each week for completing the Challenge questions online. The Challenges also provide a way for all the teams to stay engaged over the whole ten weeks, even when they are not out exploring on Overland Stages. Each Week’s Challenge focuses on a different aspect of overland travel or outdoor skills — sometimes the competitors will have to do something offline in order to answer the questions and other times they just need to respond to multiple choice knowledge-checks. The teams are always free to research answers or find tutorials to help them complete the tasks prior to submitting their Challenges and once each Challenge “closes” they can consult the “correct” answers and explanations — turning it into a defacto learning opportunity.