so my dear overlander out here
quick summary of the training and the right after Adv Southside Offroad and Survival Exhibition:
We started of with the training on Saturday 1000 at Ultraterrain Geisingen.
Hefty rain in the previous night made the ground challenging as the former mining area is one big gravel/mud pit.
The weather however was nice and it cleared up during the day.
I'm already familiar to the location and did trainings here before, so this was more of a fun and improvement day than taking up fundamentals.
The training was an intermediate level and we had a group of a well modified XJ cherokee, W463 G-class professional final limited series and a stock VW Amarok next to our Jeep.
For the Amarok the training was adopted a little to easy level, as this vehicle was equipped with regular on-road tires.
In the morning we were driving on an articulation parcour, very suitable to get your 4WD/AWD system known.
No big deal with all lockers and reduction engaged, however groundclearance is definetly key as the parcour has two difficulty levels.
The parcour can be managed without reduction gear and just the use of the automatic from QuadraDrive II.
The two difficulty levels are a section with simple ditches and holes and another section with burried mining truck tires to drive over.
As we advance we moved on to a step hill aproach, driving up, reversing down, stopping in the middle and combination of mud, watercrossing, sand and boulder passages as well as a steep hill climb.
ON the combination of steep hill climb and mud water crossing I almost got stuck, but as I had reduction and lockers engaged the Commander worked himself out of the misery with muddy water flowing above the hood and crawling up the 45% climb
The area has a lunch break as per legal requirement from the local administration. So no parcour use during 12-1300 therefore we went to a closeby italian restaurant for some pizza.
At this point the lady with the Amarok left.
In the afternoon we continued on the steep hill and water crossings.
The parcour is elevated over a still operating gravel mine and through steep, tight and challenging paths you can access various plateaus with a nice view above the mine.
These paths however, I'd not reccomend with a standard SUV, as there are sharp rocks and boulders up to 30cm wich require adequate tires and underbody protection.
Driving upwards requires reduction gearing to not overstress the driveline wiht high refs.
The parcour also offers a section for ATV and Enduro bikes with tight turns, short breakovers and drive over obstacles like logs, tires and pipes.
Especially with 4door 4WD and Trucks the breakover angles are challenging.
So we did that with the Commander, G-Class and XJ as well.
I highcentered the Commander on one of these breakover hills and had to find a different line on that tight path.
In the afternoon, the mine was closed and we had a chance for a expediting the mining area below the regular driving parcour.
Especially challening are the sections with the mining mill poweder, which can be very unpredictable - another nice adventure were the passages that look like Morocco - at least how I'd imagin it would be, it's still on the drive to list :D
At 1700 we drove down the washing facility, but frankly speaking I just cleaned my tire profile and the underbody a little since we still planned to drive to the exhibition on the same evening.
The nice thing about the exhibition, it was just 20mins away fromthe training location.
The Adventure Southside is like Abenteuer&Allrad more of a camping highlight to me then a actual shopping place.
I mean you can shoot some nice prices on gear though but it's more about hanging out with the Defenders, Landcruisers and other overlanding people here.
And on top, there is the exhibition :D plus side programm with live music and workshops.
I'd say the camping was a little overbooked, I took a while until we got a slot assigned but we managed still.
Our location was one camp area in the middle of the exhibition surrounding woods.
Next to us all kind of crazy vehicles like and overlander Hummvee, fully built Overland Trucks, Landcruiser of all ages as well as G-class, Defender... the usual suspects.
We set up our tent, chairs, table and all that stuff and got into touch with our neighbors.
Geartalk, Traveltalk and a little alcohol started
So we had dinner, basically just some leftover from the way to huge pizza from lunch, warmed up on the camping stove.
We hanged out with our just freshly met people and had an awesome time together.
Before we headed to bed in our tent, we also did a quick visit in the live music festival corner.
They played some interesting elektro blues which was nice to listen while sitting at the campfire under a full star night sky.
On the following day, I woke up a little earlier.
It was raining during night but we stayed dry.
On the morning we already had sunshine and I walked up the hill all the way up to the exhibition entry point where a bakery stand was selling fresh bread for brekafast.
After some nice self brewn coffee, croissants and baguette we went on the exhibition.
They even had one dealer stand presenting the Jeep Gladiator - wich was supposed to have official Europe debut in Italy on the same weekend - that was clearly a highlight as this vehicle is quite a interesting base and potential future buy to me.
On the exhibition you can attend all sorts of bushcraft and survival workshops - making a knife, cooking, building things.... GPS workshops, how to survive a mine field and such stuff
At the end of the day we ended up buying an RTT and a medium size fridge freezer and both my wife and myself happy.
Next year we're doing this again - hope to meet some other OB members here next time
