#Art of rally tips and tricks series#

The list of bad-ass students goes on and on, including the members of the American covert intelligence community. “JSOC opened us up to Delta Force, SEAL Team Six, and 24th Special Tactical Squadron from the Air Force,” Ken says. So began the CAM school, and thousands of elite students have come through since. In the early 2000s, he was approached by the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), to help train members of Task Force Orange, a special intelligence unit, in off-road driving. Ken has been off-roading for most of his life, including a stint in the Army and successfully competing in the storied Camel Trophy off-road series.īut his credentials come into better focus when he talks about his regular students. This is just one of the techniques taught by Ken and his team, who include veteran off-roaders and a former member of the FBI. There’ll be less jouncing up and down (and frame-scraping on sharp rocks) as you get up those scrambles.

And by app, we mean application of left-foot braking, a neat trick that, when overlaid with right-foot throttle, helps to keep all four of a vehicle’s wheels planted and supplying equal torque.

And even if you own a Tacoma or Defender or Bronco, you’ll still need off-road skills. You’ll need four-wheel drive and ground clearance. This perspective is, after all, self-selecting. They think they’re on the scenic route, but most will never even imagine what it looks like from up here. That highway – Utah State Route 128 – is also known as the Upper Colorado River Scenic Byway, and I briefly feel sorry for the occupants in their tiny little cars scuttling along its asphalt. The Colorado River and a highway cut across the landscape. Coyote–worthy mesas and the faraway, snow-salted La Sal mountains. I exit the Range and sit down at the edge of a sandstone precipice, a thousand-plus foot drop to the desert floor below, my feet dangling into nothingness.

#Art of rally tips and tricks series#

The Sport (yes, a Sport!) capably crawls up a series of rocky shelves and narrow ridges until we reach the panoramic payoff: The Dome Plateau Overlook. We’re using one of Ken’s rigs, a 2013 Range Rover Sport outfitted with a two-inch lift and beefy Cooper S/T MAXX tires.