The Texas hill country plays host to the 2023 Land Rover TReK competition

The Texas Hill Country is rugged. Drive west from Austin and you’ll find yourself in limestone and granite hills half covered with yucca, prickly pear and my favorite, Live Oak. It’s dry and dusty out there, and I’m not sure how often it rains on this portion of the Edwards Plateau. Hardly ever would be my guess.

Hidden Falls Adventure Park, in the Hill Country just up the road from Marble Falls, was our playground for the 2023 Land Rover TReK off-road competition. The park is a little like Moab, sans the slick rock, and covers 3,000 acres with both moderate and extreme terrain. Two of the more prominent peaks climb 300 feet above the main road. You’re likely to see a western diamondback or a white tail deer if you get out early, which we did. I may have told one of our competitors, team Quebec, to be especially careful if they came across a Chupacabra.

Hill Country can be a furnace in the middle of summer when the sun beats the animals into the shade. But central Texas in mid-October is wonderful, with breezy temps in the lower 80’s. It was just the weather you want for a day full of: winching, manually airing tires, negotiating long trails of steep rocky steps and the odd Texas style challenge.

The annual Land Rover TReK event is reminiscent of the iconic Camel Trophy from the 1980’s and 90’s, but without the leaches, looters and lacerations. We had plenty of good food and sleep and not one truck got sunk in the mud, as far as I know.

Much like the Camel Trophy, TReK is not a race. Sure, there are timed events requiring significant hustle. You will run and lift, struggle and sweat, get dirty, thirsty and tired. Some teams might argue or debate routes and methods. Leaders will emerge and skills will shine. But the star of this show, just like with its predecessor event, is teamwork. You will grow as a team, have fun as a team and you will surely succeed as a team.

Our day of competition relied heavily on GPS coordinates and a rudimentary map where our ten “tasks” would take place. But, finding the task locations and driving to them required us to first locate our truck. That’s right, you start your day on foot or bike or both depending on what your team decides is best. It’s interesting how fun and laughs turn to grit and determination when you hear the blast of an air horn.

One hundred and nine Land Rover dealership teams competed this year in several waves. Each team driving a Defender TReK owned by the local dealer and outfitted with off-road accessories. The limited-edition trucks are unique vehicles and we were allowed to borrow them for the day. My team was part of the wave of journalists and influencers invited to see what the event is all about.

These competition Defenders include a remote-control winch and full winch kit. It’s also equipped with a low-profile snorkel, suspension lift, gear rack and Tread Pro traction boards. We used the winch and traction boards several times. The snorkel? Not once.

We easily climbed steep limestone tracks and negotiated some very tight courses (once while blindfolded, but more on that later). It is a luxurious 4×4 built for adventure. The ride was comfortable and I easily linked my phone to the entertainment system so we could hear a few tunes on our way to piling up more points in our quest to unseat the team pursuing their three-peat. Spoiler – we didn’t, they did.

Competition day began an hour before sunup with a lite breakfast and some coffee. The pre-race meeting was what you might expect – brief with few clues as to what lay ahead. We were handed a score sheet and given some simple instructions to go along with a list of GPS coordinates. The horn sounded before we had a chance to agree on a team name.

Shortly into our hike, “MC and the Hammers” became our rallying cry and no one seemed to be on our tails. We were in the lead!? Well, that is, until team “three-peat” caught up with us less than a hundred yards from the trucks. They were running and had no intention of making our climb onto the podium an easy one. We were undeterred and charged up the hill right behind them.

Finding our Defender, we dove into the truck and headed to our first task. It was one of the high score tasks, involving a very small trailer, a barrel one quarter full of water, a snatch block and a trail ride. Hook up the trailer, hoist the barrel, drive around the course four times without touching or allowing the barrel to fall off the trailer, back the trailer, unload the barrel and stow your winch and gear. Given an hour to complete, or move on with a score of zero, we cautiously took a full 57 minutes, learning an important, if simple, lesson – move faster, take risks.

Tasks included tricky winching scenarios as well as first aid and fire-building skills like you would see on the TV show Survivor. And one decidedly Texan task was simple, old school summer camp fun. A team “plank walk” back and forth across a dirt lot, with a steer roping exercise at each turn. Lasso the “steer”, jump back on the planks and, in unison, head toward the steer on the other side of the lot. Repeat this back and forth without falling off the planks, lassoing steers as many times as you can in twenty-five minutes. We were slightly above average with nineteen lassos. My Oklahoma DNA proved helpful for this silly event.

At the end of the day, we had about thirty-five minutes remaining before the cut-off time of 2:27PM, when we rolled up onto the final event on our scorecard. Each member of the team would drive half of an off-road course blindfolded, with the passenger giving directions. It was a fun and exhilarating ninety seconds of – “Right!”, “MORE RIGHT!”, “More gas”, “FASTER!”, “Sharp left”, “SLOW DOWN!”, “Bumpy track, but GO FASTER!”. Not surprisingly, we finished our final task in less than half the allotted time.

We arrived back at base camp with a few minutes to spare. And after some score tallying and the unfortunate application of penalties, we were a very close second. In accepting the winner’s trophy, a spokesman for the three-time champs did say they were concerned about us all day and were not at all confident of a win. That only made me want to do it again. Next year our team will start the day faster and run to the truck.

Land Rover utilizes the TReK competition to build strong dealership teams, and has found the competition is a significant employee retention program. I have participated in more corporate team-building events than I care to remember, but I have never been a part of something as rewarding and fun as TReK.

The Camel Trophy motto “One Life, Live It” is appropriate no matter your vehicle of choice. There may be no better way than an event like TReK to get out there, make friends, test your skills and competitive nature, learn the importance of teamwork and have a lot of fun.

OutdoorX4 Magazine – Promoting responsible vehicle-based adventure travel and outdoors adventure