July 26, 2022 – USA: The seventh Weekly Challenge of the Nomad Overland Virtual Adventure Rally focuses on wildlife observation and tracking skills. Getting to see wild animals in their natural environment is one of the great pleasures of backcountry exploration and Nomad Teams are encouraged to actively look for wildlife via the Photo Quest. The Wildlife Observation Challenge tests the teams’ abilities to recognize different animal tracks and gait patterns that they may see during their travels.
While Nomad Teams are not expected to be expert trackers, they will have a richer experience if they are able to read signs and distinguish between animal track types. The Challenge also examines the competitors’ knowledge of some common wildlife behaviors that might make it easier to safely sight and photograph animals in the backcountry.
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.