Environmentally responsible, vehicle-dependent back-country exploration and 4x4 adventure travel in the Pacific Northwest (Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and British Columbia).
History
The website was originally formed in February of 2006 as a regional website for Land Rover owners to discuss their vehicles, share trail information, and make friends. Originally called "Soggy Oval" a play on the Land Rover nickname "Muddy Oval". Over time, the group found an identity that seemed to embrace long 4WD trails and primitive camping more than anything else. The name was changed to the "Northwest Overland Society" in the summer of 2006. In the spring of 2007 we publically transitioned to a vehicle agnostic website to better reflect the fact that our members now owned all makes of vehicles. We now have members that drive Land Rovers, Mercedes G-wagens, pinzgauers, unimogs, Toyota Land Cruisers, Jeep Rubicon's, Sportsmobile Vans, and other makes/models suitable for sustained Overland Travel. If you drive a capable, well maintained offroad vehicle. enjoy primitive back-country 4x4 exploration, and subscribe to the Tread Lightly principles then you will be warmly welcomed.
Activities
While the Northwest Overland Society doesn't sanction events our members very actively use the website to coordinate their own activities. The Event Calendar and discussion forums are open to any member who wants to use them to coordinate an activity. Members have organized Overland trips, meet and greets, tech sessions, wrenching sessions, etc.
Highlighted Trips
2006 - Quilomene Overland Adventure - Featured in Land Rover Monthly magazine
2006 - Whipsaw Trail - British Columbia - Featured in Land Rover Monthly magazine
2007 - Sunset Mine primitive camping and Lake Isabelle trail run with Scott Brady, of Expeditions West, on the return leg of his Arctic Expedition.
Education
- Winchline.com / Viking offroad demonstrated proper winch rope splicing techniques and covered the pros/cons of synthetic winchline.
- ARB provided a day of Intermediate Offroad Driving and Safety Instruction
- ARB in Renton had us down for an in-depth demonstration of their gear, tour of the shop, and pizza.
- Bradford Rovers did a session on getting your truck ready for the trail
- Bradford Rovers did a session on CVs and Axles
- Old Town Garage presented a 3 part class on what to do when your vehicle won't start.
- Spatial Minds presented a 3 part course on Navigation.
Meet and Greets
- Regular group that meets for a family dinner, beer, or "cultural food" potlucks in the greater Seattle-Tacoma-Bellingham area.
- Regular group that meets in the Portland, OR area.
- Growing Central Washington membership
- Encouraging BC and ID area growth
About the website hardware: After experimenting with various cheap website hosting providers we migrated the NW Overland Society website to a dedicated server. The server itself has redundant power supplies, redundant mirrored hard disks, regular automated backups, and is regularly maintained. The server is co-located in a secure data center with fire supression, diesel backup power (and guaranteed fuel delivery), redundant temperature, humidity controls, anti-static environment, seismic zone 3 standard survivability, located away from major metropolitan areas (won't get bombed), multi-homed redundant internet backbone connections, etc (seriously, there is more). The redundant internet connections are routed through Seattle and Vancouver, BC. The Seattle connection is one of the top 5 internet backbone connections in the world.
The site is based on a highly customized version of DotNetNuke running on top of Microsoft SQL Server. We've incorporated a variety of commercial and privately developed modules and a custom skin. Most of the graphics were member submitted. Most notably, the banner photos were mostly taken by Peter Carey of Hidden Creek Photography, and the logo was provided by Mellie Price.