Well Kelvin, looks like we might have to organise a trip leaders day or weekend for the west side of town as well mate. What you think?

Graeme.

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Good on you for wanting to lead a trip Matt.

It really isn't hard, just good prep work and planning and preferably doing a dry run of the tracks, hell if I can lead trips with under a year in a 4WD in my open diff Ranger on 29's then anyone can.

It appears that the more hardcore drivers have plenty of trips available, med/hard, hard seems to come up a bit, and those trips don't always fill and get cancelled. 

The easy/med, med trips always seem to be in demand and they almost always fill within hours of being posted.

Look at Alex's snow trip http://www.4wdtrip.com.au/trip.aspx?tripid=471 at the moment it's has 5 going and 15 interested.

Maybe get the route map from him, and run one the week before???

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At the moment I am waiting for some suspension arms to arrive so no trips untill they  and some extended brake lines are fitted  No its not hard to run a trip and have done it before but after looking at all the track closures this year its not easy to find a decent route other than just dirt roads but working on it and will finalise location soon and once I have the car ready will post a trip or 2.

A snow trip is definatly on the cards...

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What level do you plan to run Matt?

easy/med 

med

med/hard to hard

Full hard?

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Will probably run some of each level, but I will always over state the difficulty level, I have seen the consiquence of under stating over the years and that never ends well, better to over state then if half way through people want harder stuff its easy to step it up a bit.

Not really interested in running really hard days, happy to go on them but not lead at this stage and not just easy drives in the bush that can be done in a falcon, dirt roads bore the crap out of me unless there is plenty of opposite lock going on

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No worries Matt, can I suggest easy/med to med, they seem to be the ones in demand.

Almost every time they book out in hours. If you don't like easy dirt roads, that's fine, but easy med will often have a bit of that in the mix, so maybe concentrate on med.

Antony (who is a great trip leader) sometimes has trouble filling med/hard and hard trips, and they get cancelled. Jason cancelled one too.

http://www.4wdtrip.com.au/trip.aspx?tripid=468

http://www.4wdtrip.com.au/trip.aspx?tripid=448

http://www.4wdtrip.com.au/trip.aspx?tripid=447

http://www.4wdtrip.com.au/trip.aspx?tripid=424

http://www.4wdtrip.com.au/trip.aspx?tripid=422

It certainly isn't because of the trip leader, I haven't met Jason and don't know anything about him, and I have only heard/seen great things about Antony.

So it appears that there is a finite amount of people who want to do the harder trips, (even though many have twin locked 33,35in rigs).

Therefore if the objective is to get more actual running trips going then perhaps look at med to easy/med level, as harder trips just don't seem to be in as much demand.

Or perhaps a better way of putting it is that there are more harder trips on offer than there are people wanting them.

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I live out the Western side of Vic (Snake Valley past Ballarat) so trips over here are more suitable, haven't been to Mt Cole yet but keen to have a look as it's about 50 mins from here, same as Pyrenese near Avoca which is about an hour the back way  ​ I don't mind Cobaw, no mud and some good technical driving which is more my cup of tea, Tallarook went once when I first moved here but haven't done much since some good tracks and not too much mud. I'm not a mud fan you may have gathered, I'll go through it but I won't go looking for it for a challenge so to speak.

As far as trip standard but I prefer the more technical driving more interesting than bog holes. I'll never go on a trip and whinge it's too easy, as they say not happy get off your arse and run a trip yourself. An easy trip can sometimes be the best trips and the most enjoyable.

Trav

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End of the day matt you go where you want to. Might sound selfish but we are all here because of one thing and no matter where you run a trip with enough notice people will join because it's still 4wding. As I said befor, might sound selfish but every trip I have posted has been where I want to/feal like going, it's just a bonus that there are people who want to join me. 

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Very good point Antony, Matt is your motive to get more trips running primarily for the benefit of the site/members that miss out, or to get more trips for yourself to enjoy? (no right or wrong answer there)

I know I did Tallarook to death a few months ago and got a little bored of it personally, but still ran trips there so first timers/newcomers could have a day out, it was always still a fun time, but I did it primarily to promote newcomers participating. Some of the Tehan's tracks are quite steep and to see someone's reaction after negotiating them safely is priceless if they haven't experienced that before.

Anyway, I have found trip leading rewarding, even though most of my trips are pretty tame.

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Do what you're comfortable doing as a trip leader Matt, nothing worse than doing a trip that is out of your depth (been there, done that and learnt a hell of a lot from it and was better for it overall!!).

I have been out of practice on the 4WD front (haven't steered a Land Rover in anger off-road in over 3 years!!) so happy to participate til I get my nerve back again, prehaps I may run a trip at some point, just need to get off my arse and get on a trip when the time allows and when the weather warms up a bit (call me a sook but cold weather isn't really my cup of tea when it comes to 4WDing).

Trav

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not really Mark, it is easy to run a medium trip and then have 1 or 2 cars that want to try a harder track and have the other meet at the top. This gives the chance for people to sit in a passenger seat or watch from the outside to see what its about doing hard stuff.

I and plenty of others have been on trips that are hard and not everyone does all the tracks, have seen onlt half the group do steep and phone on several trips. The last hard trip I did on this forum I was the only one that felt uneasy about doing 1 of the tracks, I watched a few cars go up and had a half assed attempt then decided no not for me today and went around anotherway and met everyone at the top.

No pressure and no shame, we all just do what we are comfortable with on the day

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Matt at this point in time I'm not aware of you running a trip on this site, (correct me if I'm wrong). So I hope after all this you do go ahead and actually run one.

From your first post you seemed like you were looking for feedback of what kind of trips/levels that were desired, but your most recent posts indicate what kind of trips/levels you actually want.

Whatever trip you decide to run then great, the more trip leaders the better, whatever level, have fun!

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