Down & Dirty

We head to Malaysia for the Rainforest Challenge, a world of crimson mud, black scorpions and specially-adapted crawler rigs

- Chris Collard

There is a long-running debate, not just in our offices, on which is the toughest, meanest off-road event in the world. The US has King of the Hammers, Mexico hosts the Baja 1000, South America is the adopted home of the Dakar Rally, and Australia hosts the Outback Challenge. After a trip across the Paci c to check out a little event with a big reputation, it’s clear that Southeast Asia has another contender for the Badass Top 10: the Rainforest Challenge (RFC).

We arrived in the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur to a gala parade, grand presentations with local dignitaries, and some radical competition rigs. Vehicles flew flags from Russia, China, Japan, Mongolia, Ecuador, and a host of other countries, and a truly international group assembled for the driver’s orientation.

Chatting with founder Luis Wee, we learned that RFC and its various chapters host events in nearly two dozen countries throughout the year. The Malaysian venue just happens to be the grand finale. Considering the fact that the country is 50% jungle and averages nearly 250cm of rain annually (3 0cm where the event takes place), it is the ideal locale for a mud slog of epic magnitude. We were told that the 201 event, the 23rd annual, would be relatively dry, but soon learned that in Malaysia, dry’ simply means less wet.

The Prologue and Predator stages of the first two days are a bit of a warmup and consist of a dozen flagged tracks through hill and dale near the coast. Day 3 found us deep in the Northern Highlands – where civilisation ends and the jungle begins. Organisers, support crews, media, and race teams must be fully self-contained – the longest stretch between fuel sources entailed 600 kilometres of muddy two-tracks.

Tyres, Tech, and Time