![]() ![]() ![]() As the festival gained international notoriety, the lore, infamy and reputation of the Black Rock Desert also rose. In 1991, the Burning Man Festival relocated from San Francisco to its current home, the Black Rock Desert Playa. Traveling High Rock Canyon is hard on vehicles, it must've been hell for the early emigrants who would've bushwhacked their way through the breast high sagebrush. It's hard to imagine the adventure and tragedy that emigrants faced in the harsh and unforgiving desert landscape. In all, over 120 miles of emigrant trails pass through the NCA. The same trails were used for intra-state/territory travel to reach the Sierra gold fields and mines in Idaho. The trails acted as major thoroughfares to both Oregon and California for emigrants seeking opportunity out West. The most well known of these trails includes the Applegate, Lassen, and Nobles Trails. The NCA is named after the Black Rock Desert, High Rock Canyon, and the numerous emigrant trails that passed through the Black Rock Desert. The featured overland route is a highlight reel of all the better known and lesser known points of interest within the National Conservation Area. “That’s a potential future customer,” she said.The Black Rock Desert-High Rock Canyon Emigrant Trails National Conservation Area covers 1.2 million acres that are managed by BLM. And meeting other adventure-seeking women gave her insights into what they wanted in an off-road vehicle. Klein, whose day job involves ensuring the quality of Honda vehicles’ structure, seats and safety belts, had a front row seat to test these aspects of the truck. “While it was a competition for the podium, it was also a test of the human spirit,” she said. “The sense was, ‘We’re all in this together - and we’re all going to finish.’” It was amazing to see the kindness to others.”Īfter dinner every night, Klein and others told stories from the day. In fact, they would risk losing points to ask others if they needed help. “There was a different energy among both participants and staff. Reflecting on the “life changing” experience, Klein noted the cooperative spirit of her competitors. Subsisting on chips, red licorice and crackers by day, Klein, Guitar and other participants were rewarded with a chef-prepared meal at base camp every evening. Each day was a high-stakes scavenger hunt, with the team earning points by finding a series of checkpoints - often in the middle of nowhere. Then, in October, Klein and Guitar embarked on the eight-day trek from Lake Tahoe to San Diego. “Emily taught us how to read shadows on the sand, navigate by mountain peaks and how to safely drive the various terrains of the West,” Klein said. And since the rally forbids the use of phones or GPS, Honda flew the two women to California for 1:1 training with Rebelle Rally founder and professional racer Emily Miller, who taught them to use a topography map and a compass to navigate. ![]() With just four months to prepare, Klein, Guitar and a group of engineers from across several divisions at the company made sure the bright green 2018 Honda Ridgeline was all-terrain-ready. Though Honda hadn’t competed before, the company sponsored two teams of women engineers for the event. in Raymond, Ohio, was thrilled to pair up with Guitar, another Honda engineer, for the Rebelle Rally, the first U.S. Klein, a mechanical engineering graduate who’s now a crash safety engineer at Honda R&D Americas, Inc. “One day, we even threw (a tumbleweed) in the back and took it with us.” “We (she and teammate Maria Guitar) nicknamed our truck Tumbleweed,” Klein said. These are a few things Michelle Gerrity Klein ’12 saw on an intense 1,500-mile off-road auto endurance race through the deserts and mountains of Nevada and California last October.Īnd lots of tumbleweeds. ![]()
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