The Greenlaner NEWSLETTER OF THE SOUTHERN LAND ROVER SOCIETY — FEB 2009

The Southern Land Rover Society (Solaros) hosted the Fifteenth Annual Southern Appalachian Expedition over the weekend of November 7-9, 2008. This annual Land Rover event was held at the Skeenah Creek Campground in North Georgia near Blairsville. Over 70 members and guests attended the SAE this year and despite some cold temperatures and a short period of rain on Friday the attendees had a great time. This year the Solaros team was forced to find a new location for the SAE as the old Mountain Oak Campground in Blairsville had closed down. The Skeenah Creek campground was selected and the campground’s owners ensured that our choice was proven to be the right one as they did everything they could to make us feel welcome. That even included free firewood for all the campers delivered right to your campsite – something that was most appre-ciated by all of us as the temperatures dropped into the 30’s in the evenings. Skeenah Creek campground is right on Highway 60 northwest of Suches and features an old gristmill on the property. Some of the Solaros members took advantage of the rental trailers that were offered but most of the members brought their tents and set up camp.

SAE 2008

Solaros Meeting Location Changes for March The Counter—850 Mansell Rd, Roswell, GA 30076

Tel 678-461-9661—100 yards east of Alpharetta Hwy on Mansell Rd

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Presidents Report: As the New Year gets underway, I want to begin by congratulating and thanking the Board of Directors and officers, committee chairs and members, and members at large who made 2008 a successful year for SOLAROS. Through your efforts and support, our monthly meetings and events, including the 15th Annual Southern Appalachian Expedition (SAE), were well attended and received accolades from par-ticipants. Given the state of our economy and ridiculously high fuel prices that precipitously dropped just before our main event, SAE was a financial success ― well, if that includes breaking even. Because of your participation and generosity, SOLAROS raised $5,000.00 during our Saturday night BBQ and charity auction, which was split between 2 praiseworthy charities, the United Cerebral Palsy of Georgia Founda-tion and Southern Four Wheel Drive Association. Through donations from our generous sponsors, a va-riety of sought-after products and services were offered during the auction. We had a large number of sponsoring organizations this year, including

• • Hennessy Land Rover

• 4 Wheel Parts • Atlantic British • Barbour • Bear Valley Vehicle Sales • Butler Bags • Engel Refrigerators • English/Swedish Parts • Great Basin Rovers • Hard Labor Creek Fabrication • Interstate Batteries • Jackson Acura • Jumping Jellyfish • Land Rover Driving Experience • Land Rover Monthly • Land Rover North America • Land Rover Life Style • McPherson Oil • NAPA • Overland Journal • Rovers North • RoverTym Engineering • Safari Rover • Southern Off-Road Specialist • THE SHOP

As the opportunity arises, please let these sponsors know how much you appreciate their donations, support, and participation.

Upcoming event calendar: April 11—Solaros Tech day at The Shop—get ready for the spring off road season! April 16-19 Tellico April 17-19 Uhwarrie Safari May 16—British Motorcar Day at Berry College

Despite offering members free registration and no camping fees to attend this event, we sold enough meals t-shirts, and SOLAROS store paraphernalia and collected enough new member registration fees and 2009 membership renewal fees to be able to offer free registration and camping to members for the 2009 SAE. If you haven’t done so already, renew your membership today and encourage those who attended the event but have not yet joined SOLAROS to sign up soon. We believe this member benefit more than justifies the membership fees. Speaking of successful t-shirt sales, I would like to recognize and congratulate Dennis Brown who won the t-shirt design contest and encourage the artist or want-to-be artist in the crowd to start brainstorm-ing ideas for next year’s t-shirt. If you missed meeting Bill Davis from Great Basin Rovers or his talk on optimizing your drive train for off-road driving at SAE, you missed a great opportunity. We want to thank Bill for traveling from Utah to participate and speak at our event; his daughter Shawn for helping organize the trip for Bill; Luke and Dez for transporting Bill and Shawn to and from the airport and host-ing them in their house; and Christian Kuntz and Dave Murrell for donating their frequent flyer points to pay for Bill’s and Shawn’s airline tickets. We hope to have Bill attend one of our meetings or events in 2009 to further discuss how to maximize our off-roading experiences.. We ended 2008 with a high hopes and lots of great ideas for 2009, including more adventure and chal-lenge rides. With the New Year, we elected a new set of officers. The officers for 2009 are

• Ross Davidson, President • David Russell, Vice President • Rick Ward, Membership & Finance • Scott Wold, Events coordinator • Mike Pado, Member-at-Large and SAE chairman • Steve Herrod, Secretary • Roger Hunter, Videographer • Jack Walter, Newsletter editor

The new officers met on January 14, 2009 to review our successes and opportunities for improvement from 2008 and map out a strategy for 2009. New to our leadership team is David, aka Moose. Russell, who brings a wealth of organizational skills, an easy going demeanor, and a dogged determination that will ensure the 2009 SAE will be a great success. Moose also manages the club store, acts as SWFDA liaison, secures monthly meeting speakers, and steps up to the plate whenever the president is unable to execute his duties. Also new to the Board of Directors and assisting Moose in coordinating and executing the SAE is Mike Pado. As SAE coordinator, Mike will chair a committee to plan and execute our annual SAE. The committee will oversee all aspects of the event’s production, including but not limited to securing a venue suitable for camping and trail rides select trail ride leaders, food services, coordinate non-trail ride activities, and secure sponsorships and donations. Anyone interested in joining this committee should contact Mike at [provide contact information]. In addition to his responsibilities as SAE committee chair, Mike has accepted the position of member-at-large on the Board of Directors and will be responsible for appris-ing the board of issues and/or information identified by members during the calendar year. You may have noticed that we combined the Membership and Treasurer Officers for 2009. We felt this change would streamline membership procedures and processes and improve efforts to recruit new and keep existing members. . Information about how to become a member or renew your membership was recently posted on the BBS. We are also creating and plan to run an advertisement to attract other likeminded Roverphiles on www.craigslist.com. Once again, Rick Ward has assumed the respon-sibility of increasing/maintaining membership and the club’s accounts. He did a fabulous job of getting our financial house in order in 2008 and I’m confident that he will continue to make significant contribu-tions in 2009.

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Although not new to the Board of Directors, Scott Wold has assumed the daunting role of Events Coor-dinator. He is forming a committee to help finalize a calendar filled with adventure and fun for 2009. Our goal is to offer at least 1 club event per month, collaborating with other clubs to strengthen the overall participation. The events tentatively on the calendar for 2009 include: o o Spring Thing (Tellico)

o Uwharrie

o Caney Forks (January)

o SAE (November)

o Guns & Rovers

o Florida Rover Events

o Durham Town

o Wild Life Safari with Camping

o Beasley

o Green Oval Car Show

o National Rally(Moab)

o British Motor Car Show

o Adventure rides

o Expedition Event (Ride across Georgia)

If you are interested in serving on the Events Committee, please contact Scott (event.coordinator@solaros.com). Your ideas and participation in developing and executing this year’s events is welcomed. Finally, kudos to Jack Walter whose vision for and execution of a SOLAROS calendar turned into a re-sounding success. This entrepreneurial venture generated more than $700.00 during the SAE action and will generate more income for the club through sales. The calendars are available for purchase for $10.00 if purchased at a monthly SOLAROS meeting or $12.00 (to cover postage) if ordered online. Only100 of these rare beauties were printed, so get them while you can. My goal as President in 2009 is to ensure that the club serves its membership and community well. This could not and will not happen without the talent and time of each member, especially those who have accepted leadership positions or have volunteered for committees. If you haven’t gotten con-nected with a committee and would like to participate, please volunteer your time and talents wherever you feel you can best contribute. I believe you will find the experience to be fun, educational, and, of course, a little bit of hard work. Again, thanks for a great 2008 and I look forward to seeing you at all our meetings and events in 2009. Best regards, RD

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SOLAROS calendars are now available at reduced cost! The official SOLAROS Calendar is now available for the low cost of $8 each (or $10 if we have to mail it to you). See David Russell at any of the meetings or contact him directly to get your copy. Each month features a picture of a different Solaros members truck and the date of each month’s meeting is printed right on the day of the meeting so you’ll always know when the next meeting is.

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Charles Loner brought his father’s home built camper – the Hillbilly Hilton – a big aluminum box on wheels. Scott Smith forgot his tent altogether – not a clever

move for a camping trip. Todd Miller brought one of the neat Sylvan Sport Go camper trailers from the Hennessy Land Rover dealership. There are lots of options for the Land Rover enthusiast to enjoy from this location. The Beasley Knob ORV area is about 18 miles northeast for those who were looking for some challenging terrain and The Coopers Creek area just to our south had numerous scenic gravel Forest Service roads to explore. On the first Beasley Knob ride a Series truck’s fuel pump gave up the ghost and a later expedition had to organized to re-trieve it. David Russell generously removed the pump from his truck once he got back to camp so the other Series could also get back to camp under its own power. A small party of three trucks set out to explore a short trail near the campground that we had seen earlier in the year. It had appeared to climb up the backside of a

mountain but we had turned around when the track started getting too difficult to negotiate. This time we made it past the difficult spot and found ourselves climbing and climbing, as the narrow track got pro-gressively steeper. After more than 700 vertical feet of climb in about a third mile we neared the top of the mountain. The trail dead-ended and we turned around to go back down the leaf-covered track. After the first very steep section of the descent Roger’s wife Mich-eline demanded that he stop and let her and their dog walk as Roger’s automatic Discovery was going down the hill at a rate she thought was on the verge of being out of control. I thought the trip back down the hill was way too far for them to walk so I stopped and offered her a ride in the Defender. It took some persuading but I was able to demonstrate the advan-tage of a manual transmission and a diesel engine on steep descents when you want things to happen slowly. When we arrived at the bottom of the hill Micheline told Roger he had her permission to buy another diesel Land Rover.

The SAE had activities for kids of all ages from games and adventure rides to axle breaking trails at

SAE 2008

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Beasley Knob. The Tellico ORV area was about 1-1/2 hours away and a few campers made the trip up to Tellico as well. Solaros members also arranged to have Bill Davis and his daughter from Great Basin Rovers flown in from Utah to join us for the week-end. Bill delivered a very informative talk on Friday evening with the subject of everything you might ever want to know about Rover drivelines.

Popies Rib Shack of Blairsville, Georgia, provided a great barbecue dinner on Saturday. Everyone re-marked that this was one of the better meals we’ve had for the SAE event. One of the highlights of each SAE since it’s begin-ning is the charity auction that is held on Saturday night. The organizers do a great job of soliciting do-nations of gear from a wide range of vendors that is auctioned or raffled off after dinner. This year the vendors were particularly generous with their dona-tions and the auction raised $5000 that will be do-nated to the United Four Wheel Drive Association and the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. The auction was a lot of fun as this year’s emcee Scott Wold did a superb job as the main auctioneer. David Rus-sell was quick to step in with raffle items or giveaways whenever Scott stopped to catch his breath or fondle one of the auction items he lusted after. It was a lively and entertaining show that saw some great bargains for the attendees. Thanks again to all of the many vendors who made all of this pos-sible.

One of the big hits of the evening was the auction for space on the Official Solaros 2009 Calendar. One of the members had proposed that we do calendar featuring a different Solaros member’s truck on each month so we took the idea and decided to auction each month off. The auction raised $720 of the donations to the char-ity – thanks to the generosity of the membership and a few hotly contested months. The calendars will be available for anyone to purchase for $12 each after Jan 7th. Plans are already in work to return to Skeenah Creek for next years SAE event and the organizers hope everyone will return and have as enjoyable a time as they did in 2008. Members from Land Rover clubs in the surround-ing states are encouraged to attend and join in the fun. Log on to www.solaros.com for more information about the SAE and other events hosted by the Southern Land Rover Society.

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MAR 2008 – Oak Ridge, Virginia In order to properly celebrate the 60th Anniversary of the Land Rover the Rover Owner’s Association of Vir-ginia decided to hold their annual Mid-Atlantic Rally at the Oak Ridge Estate instead of the more traditional Pearls Pond location in central Virginia. The Oak Ridge Estate is a privately owned 4500 acre property that has hosted numerous 4WD events and offers miles of scenic and challenging trails as well as a much big-ger area for this annual gathering of Land Rover own-ers from up and down the east coast. This year’s event saw around 325 vehicles entered, which due to the re-cent spike in fuel prices coupled with the change in lo-cation was a pretty respectable showing. The Mid Atlantic Rally or MAR is traditionally held on the first weekend in October – a time of year when the nights start to feel the first chill of fall and the air is crisp with the change of seasons. This is prime camp-ing weather and the MAR is highly anticipated among Land Rover owners for hundreds of miles around as an opportunity to gather and spend a few days riding trails, socializing and checking out the vendors at the event. The organizers have a tremendous task to organize an event of this size and this year’s MAR was very different from recent ones. There were some definite improvements but some of the old feel of the event was also missing. They realize that some things need to be done differently by next year and promise to address some of the participants concerns. Once again this year the Georgia club Solaros was well represented at MAR even though it’s a nine-hour drive for most of us. We started out by gather-ing at the Bass Pro Shops off I-85 where five trucks hooked up. Once again the drivers on the interstate

were treated to the sight of a convoy of heavily laden Land Rovers lumbering up the highway with roof racks and trailers bulging with camping gear. After an over-night stop in Lynchburg we arrived at Oak Ridge by mid-morning Thursday and set up camp in the middle of a vast space on the infield of a horse racing oval. Several other Solaros members showed up later in the day to swell the Solaros ranks to 15 attendees. Land Rovers continued to roll in throughout the day as we lined up for the first of the scheduled trail rides that afternoon. Since the property is so vast and the trails must be accessed through locked gates off public roads, Oak Ridge requires guides to lead groups of vehicles through the property. Unfortunately this arrangement doesn’t allow us the flexibility of free form trail rides (or the much loved night rides of MAR past) but the guides were very nice and the trails ranged from easy to challenging. This property is used for one of the east coast “Camp Jeep” events and most of the guides were driving modified versions of the “other brand” but they were very nice and seemed eager to learn what the Land Rovers could do on the trails.

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There were a few times during the day when the own-ers of later model Land Rovers were instructed to “lock hubs” or “put your truck in 4wd” which caused a few raised eyebrows but the guides seemed to be reasona-bly impressed by what the performance of stock Land Rovers. Some of us felt that their trail rating system was notched up by one level of difficulty – for example their “intermediate” trail would be considered by most of us as an “easy” ride. They probably gear their ratings for new Jeep owners who have never driven off road but the trails were scenic and there were a few optional obstacles for the Rovers to flex their suspensions on.

The vendor row at this year MAR was very nicely pre-sented – lots of goodies were on display and there was wide variety of places to purchase accessories for you Rover. This year there was even a shower trailer pro-vided by the MAR organizers. It had twelve shower stalls in it where a hot shower could be enjoyed throughout the weekend. Bill Burke was there with a demonstration of techniques and safety tips on the use of a high lift jack. He later presented the jack and all of its accessories to one of the MAR participants who had suffered some body damage as a sort of consolation prize. The organizers had a variety of activities scheduled throughout the weekend to keep Land Rover owners occupied – it was just unfortunate that they neglected to get a copy of the schedule into the registration packet. This is one of those “organizational things” that they’ll have address with a little better attention next year – of course this really only bothered those of us who cared much about participating in some of the activities other than sitting around and going out on trail rides.

There were activities for the kids including a draw-ing for some really nice RC Discoverys as well as the traditional teeter-totter and slow race. Lyle laid out a diabolical RTV course that challenged Rovers of all types as they attempted to navigate through a six-section trial between the canes. Even the Series 1 Land Rover was unable to clean several sections. Rovers North sponsored and scored the RTV and they did a great job. Solaros member Jack Walter cleaned three of the sections on his way to a third place in this event winning a $25 gift certificate to Rovers North. RoverTym Accessories sponsored the RoverTym Challenge that pitted twelve very well prepared trucks against each other on the toughest trails that Oak Ridge had to offer. The three winners were pre-sented with a trophy and gift certificates for even more accessories for their Rovers. The trails were interesting – lots of tight woods on the ones I went on and some of the other participants reported that they had some very nice rides on the eastern edge of the property where the trails climbed a sharp ridge. The organizers tried to adjust the trail schedule over the course of the weekend to avoid some of the crowding as some of the rides were over-subscribed. Everybody had a lot of compli-ments for the guides and the variety of trails that were available. The lack of night rides was a let down but there are some trails in the nearby George Washington National Forest that could be accessed for next year. It was nice to be somewhat closer to civilization when you needed something from the store but the proximity of US29 to the campground area and the

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resultant traffic noise was a sharp contrast to the pre-vious MAR events. At Pearls Pond the only sounds you would hear late at night was an occasional train or a broken Land Rover limping home from a late night adventure in the muddy trails along the river. Some snapshots of this year’s MAR experience: Some of the Solaros members had gone out to fuel up their trucks at lunch on Friday and they all came back carrying brown paper sacks with big grease stains soaking through the side of the bag. They all sat down and proceeded to withdraw some absolutely magnificent looking hamburgers with at least a half pound or more of meat in a double handful sized bun. As the rest of us sat there and drooled they consumed these burgers that were prepared at a small diner ad-jacent to the nearby gas station. Unfortunately the diner wasn’t open for dinner as the rest of us found out when we tried to sample them later – Steve said that was one of his biggest disappointments at this years MAR.

There was one very nearly serious accident on the gravel road leading back to some of the trails when two vehicles collided coming around a sharp turn in a dust cloud. A Range Rover classic under steered into the driver’s door of an oncoming Defender and only the massive rock slider on the Defender prevented the driver from suffering some serious injuries. The door of the D-90 looks like was clawed open by a large prehistoric reptile. Luckily no one was hurt but the D-90 was seriously wounded. The horse racing oval that surrounded the main camping area looked to be a one-mile track about 60 feet wide with a smooth gravel surface. It was hard to

resist nailing the throttle and setting up a nice four-wheel drift as you rounded the turn on the western end of the track.

Although the number of trucks was down from some of the previous years there were still plenty of interesting Land Rovers to admire – there were three or four light-weights, three 101’s and a lot of interesting Series trucks (one owner of a beautiful 109 pickup proudly pointed out how he “modernized” his 1960’s era truck with the addition of an Ipod holder to the dash – that was his sole concession to present days). There was a wide variety of camping solutions from a vintage Eureka Drawtite tent that was 40 years old to the latest in off-road camping trailers and roof top tents. The vendors at MAR donated a tremendous amount of stuff to be auctioned and raffled off during the Saturday evening gathering. They really put a lot of goodies out there for the MAR attendees. Thank you ROAV and all of your vendors for another fun weekend in Virginia.

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Talladega Ride—December 27, 2008 On Saturday, December 27 a group of 4 trucks met over in Heflin Alabama to once again do some ex-ploring in the Talladega National Forest. They in-cluded Larry Downey’s diesel BJ70 Land Cruiser, Mike Pado’s Range Rover, Dane’s Discovery and my D-90. We wanted to check out some possible trails that I had spotted on the quad sheets as well as run one of the trails we did last year. As passen-gers we had (Toyota) Scott Smith who rode with Mike, Larry had his daughter Melissa along, Dane brought his girlfriend and Ross Davidson was my co-pilot/navigator/trouble-causing instigator. Our first detour off the scenic parkway that runs along the ridge took us down to a gated road that at one time led up into the National Forest. With no

way in to that road we tried another track about 2 miles south along the western edge of the forest. This one looked a little more promising but it ended at a turnaround and a series of deep tank traps that were clearly meant to prevent further progress up what used to be a road that con-nected back up to the parkway. Traveling further south along the western edge of the National Forest we found another dirt road with a sign directing us toward a desig-nated ORV area. This ORV park is at the end of a spur road that runs off the main road and is set up for use by motorcycles, four wheelers and mountain bikes. It has over six-

teen miles of trails and looks like a fun place. There were a lot of families set up in the campground enjoying a weekend outing. Retracing our steps we turned back east and started head-

ing back toward the ridge line once again. At some point we crossed a power line and Ross pointed at a trail that snaked up the hill and said “lets go up there!” I declined this time as I have had many bad experiences on power lines. We did stop and play for a bit on a rough rutted short loop that climbed up a hill to a camping site. Somewhere along here we took a wrong turn and wound up heading back toward the southwest instead of south-east as I had planned and I had to do some quick naviga-tion to find the nice little trail that we discovered last year.

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After a stop for lunch we enjoyed a nice little tight sin-gle track ride through the woods with a couple of small stream crossings—very scenic. After exiting that trail we were looping around to head up to the ridgeline and we passed a previously gated road that was open. Since we had already passed the turn off before I could get every-body slowed down we went up the hill far enough to find a suitable turnaround spot. This turned out to be another power line and with Ross’ urging/encouragement I was persuaded to detour up the power line to see what was up there.

At the top of the next hill we could see a series of sev-eral dips and hills with a track tracing the progress of the power line. The down hills looked pretty steep from our end and the damp conditions promised that we might have some fun getting back up these hills but with Ross’ urging we were persuaded to give it a try. The first two down hills were steep and slick but looked passable. When we crested the third hill we noticed that the track we were following completely disappeared about thirty feet past the crest. A quick foot reconnais-sance revealed that the next downhill was dramatically

steeper, coated with a slick sheen of loose dirt and seemed to end up in a swamp at the bottom of the hill. Having come to the end of the road it was now time to extricate ourselves. Just reversing course proved diffi-cult enough as the slick conditions made it hard to get turned around. On the way out we each got stuck at least once requiring the use of our winches to get back up the hills. Its been years since I’ve ventured on to a power line because about 75% of my own “worst stucks” have happened on them. Once out of the power lines we went back down the hill to the FS Road and started exploring once again. When we came to a very small side trail that looked like a firebreak I decided to try it out since it looked like it might run up toward the main ridgeline. This tight twisting trail took us through a low area near a creek and then up a slick steep hill toward a small ridgeline trail that kept heading up. My D-90 was leading the way and had no trouble with the steep sec-tion but the ground conditions were such that the next truck up would hit the broken crust of my track and break traction. Under that thin crust was a slick mix of clay that prevented the other three trucks from making the last ten feet over the top. Once again we had to break out the tow straps and winches to get everybody up the hill. At the very top of the trail where it joined the main road there was a tank trap that we had to ne-gotiate in order to exit the trail. Once more the winch and straps were put into play. From here it was an easy run back to the north on the ridge road that we’ve run before but there was an un-pleasant surprise as the Forest Service has seen fit to “improve” a couple of miles of this previously rocky and scenic track. It now has been graded and im-proved into another boring stretch of gravel road (although the scenery is still nice). We just wonder if next years trip will have the improvements stretch even farther south along this favorite ride.

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2008 National Rally—by Stuart Ivey Stuart Ivey contributed this article on the 2008 National Land Rover Rally in Moab, Utah. We should all be jealous except for Luke and Desiree who were also there…. Kane Creek trail is one sneaky little devil. Starting out as a gravel road near the Behind the Rocks area, the trail descends into the Kane Creek Canyon. In the spring during the rains this trail is one creek crossing after another as you wind your way up the canyon. In September there is no rain here. The only water comes from the springs further up the canyon, and then sparingly. The sand and bamboo that frame the trail create a feeling of Africa, with a lion or a fly en-shrouded buffalo around the next turn. After a few miles of sand and creek bottom, we began the climb out of the canyon. The climb out has rock ledges. Several rock ledges. In our party of four trucks the climb out claimed one front wing, one synthetic winch line, and gave one Air Portable’s transmission a reason to act up during the climb of, wait for it, a rock ledge. Kane Creek was the most varied of the trails that we ran during the 2008 Land Rover National Rally held in Moab, Utah. The rally is hosted each year by the Soli-hull Society, based in Colorado. Over 220 trucks at-tended this year with participants exceeding 400. At-

tendees came from every region of the country and our Canadian cousins were represented as well. The rally covered five days in September, the 16th through the 20th. In addition to lead trail rides covering every degree of difficulty there was a vendor exhibit and Rover show which al-lowed you to kick the tires of over 100 trucks. Every category of Rover was represented from Series I jewels to 110 pickups with 37” tires and bone stock L322 Rangies. Each morning we would assemble at the Spanish Arena just south of town. Trail leaders would be parked in a row with a particular trail listed on their windshield. All you needed to do was queue up behind them and attend the pre-run

briefing. It was obvious that the trail leaders had been trained as each was very thorough and helpful. Atten-tion to safety was paramount with just having fun a close second. Our first trail was Fins N’ Things. This was rated mod-erate and can be run by a stock RR Sport. The fins are the rock formations that jut from the sand like the dorsal of a fish. These are the remains of rock formations from millennia ago. They are the fabled slickrock of Moab. The name comes from the lack of vegetation, not trac-tion. The sandstone makeup of the fins ensures a ride similar to driving on sandpaper. Steep climbs and descents are the rule here with sandy portions interspersed throughout the trail. With a decent approach and departure angle you can make climbs that look impossible. As the trail leader stated, ‘Sometimes physics doesn’t apply here’.

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Hell’s Revenge was tackled the next day. This con-sists of wave after wave of rolling sandstone that is alternately easy and hair raising. Throw in a few fins that are a bit steeped than K2 and you have a trail that is doable in a lifted truck. You also have drivers and passengers with white knuckles and a newfound fear of heights and rolling end over end into the un-known. A truly incredible view of the Colorado River can be found near the entrance to Hell’s Gate. The juxtapo-sition of beautiful scenery and frightening obstacles makes Hell’s Revenge a memorable trail. Moab is an incredible place that any four wheeler must see in their lifetime. Great food and new friends mix well with trails that can leave your stom-ach in a knot and your truck a bit worse for wear.

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Solaros Event Schedule for the first 6 Months of this year! February - Guns and Rovers - This weekend in Lula. Meeting at Bass Pro Shop at 9:30 AM. March - Caney Fork, March 20-22. We can caravan up on Friday afternoon. End of March - Adventure Ride - TBS (I need help with planning and running this) April - Tellico and Uhwarrie prep day at The Shop—Norcross, April 11 Two Events: Tellico Life Style Event and Uwharrie Safari, both April 16th - 19th. (For those that have yet to attend the Uwharrie Safari outside of Charlotte, NC, this is a great event put on by The Carolina Rovers Club. About 15 Solaros Members attend every year) May - Two events: British Motorcar Day—Rome, GA May 16; Beasley Knob - Trail Riding and Camping - May 22-24th June - Tellico - Trail Riding and Camping - June 19-21 End of June - Adventure Ride - TBS (I need help with planning and running this, I would like to do a 3 day Expe-dition with camping)

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SOLAROS 1325 NORTH POINT WAY ROSWELL, GA 30075

Solaros club meetings are held the third Wednesday of each month starting around 7:00 PM For more information see the club website at:

www.solaros.com Get your 2009 Solaros Calendar today—$10

Solaros annual dues $40/year—includes free admission to our signature event in November—The Southern Appalachian Expedition. Dues for 2009 are now past due! Please renew your membership at this time so you can keep getting access to the private sections of the board and attend the Fall SAE event. Dues are payable via Paypal or by US mail sent to the Solaros PO box. For Paypal payments please send $42 to: Paypal@solaros.com Or mail $40 to: Solaros Registration PO Box 1185 Roswell, GA 30077

Inside this issue: SAE 2008 MAR 2008 National Rover Rally Talladega Ride Coming Events Schedule