Nomad Challenge: Responsible Land Use

June 9, 2024 – USA: The Nomad Overland Rally teams began the event with a Weekly Challenge focused on Responsible Land Use. This first Challenge reviews competitors’ knowledge of basic Tread Lightly principles and makes sure that the teams are aware of “best practices” while out in the backcountry.

Some of the important topics covered in this Challenge include trip planning resources, good decision-making on the trail, safety and proper preparation for emergency scenarios and situational awareness.

We were happy to see how well the teams all did with this first Weekly Challenge — many of them have been involved with Tread Lightly in different ways and have been active in land stewardship projects before. The rest of their Weekly Challenges will not be so easy!

The Weekly Challenges are one of the four pillars of the event 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.