March/April 2007

Expedition Cure

by Brent Hatherill

The following feature is an excerpt from Toyota Trails, the official publication of TLCA. To read the entire article, join TLCA now!

 

It was a dry day at work for those thirsty for adventure, and after a year of the corporate world and the daily 8 to 8, both myself and Hanley Noel were beginning to feel parched. Me staring from the window of a talent management firm in Los Angeles, and Hanley from Indianapolis’s Tom Wood Porsche and Audi dealership—we both realized a shared need for adventure. Hanley had recently become active within the Indiana chapter of the TLCA and after a shared viewing of Dana Brown’s Baja 1000 documentary, Dust to Glory, ideas quickly began formulating.

Sifting through possibilities, we soon found ourselves helplessly transfixed upon a photograph of a Land Cruiser perched upon the peak of Black Bear Trail within the majestic San Juan Mountains overlooking Telluride, Colorado. Even at a glance of the photo, we knew love at first sight and decided to take the expedition of a lifetime. By drawing from Land Rover’s 1989 Great Divide Expedition (led by Tom Collins), stories from motorcycle adventure rider Mark Sampson, and suggested trails from IH8Mud.com, we created an off-roading route straight down the North American Continental Divide.

With Hanley’s aunt suffering from Parkinson’s disease, we decided to make this more than a lark and contacted The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research. In joining up with Team Fox, we had our purpose for the expedition intact.

Working with a 21 day timetable as the goal, we thought we were all set—we’re both young and adventurous, how hard could this be…? And even though Hanley’s 1996 Toyota 4Runner had just been upgraded with a new suspension, he was having doubts as to its ability to withstand the potential payload that the expedition would entail. In hindsight, maybe it was fate which brought that curious soccer mom in her 1994 Toyota Land Cruiser with dual lockers rolling onto the Tom Wood lot in search of a trade in. Either way, within a month we’d both left our jobs to embark on the now titled, Expedition Cure—and found ourselves sitting across from Carl St. Clair of Outback Off-Road Gear with a sponsorship proposition.

By then it was July and as we had plans to be at the Canadian border by September, the timetable for transforming this newly acquired 80 series from grocery-getter to expedition-ready was seeming ridiculous. Despite the fact that Carl had just run Toyota’s Great Adventure in August, we managed to capture his attention and with a flash of his mad scientist grin, we knew he was on board. Soon after, Jim Klubens joined the team, bringing the whole project closer and closer to the realm of possibility.
 
Literally a month later, what once stood a stock forest green 80, was now a bright yellow Land Cruiser equipped with a 3.5" Old Man Emu suspension lift, 35" Goodyear MTR tires, Outback Off Road Gear custom front and rear bumpers, and Outback Off Road custom sliders and safari roof rack. The Cruiser also boasted an Autohome Overland rooftop tent, Scepter Jerry cans, Storm Cases, 60" Hi-Lift Jack Extreme, Engel 12 volt freezer-fridge with slide and transit bag, Helton Hot Water Shower, Winchline.com synthetic winch line, an 11,000 lb. Pull Pal Land Anchor, and Staun tire deflators. Mounted within sat a Panasonic Toughbook CF-51 laptop with National Geographic TOPO! navigational software linked with a DeLorme Earthmate GPS receiver.

Expedition Cure had grown from an idea to 33 corporate sponsorships, with a website featuring updated GPS tracking, photo galleries, video and a Donate to Win contest. By September, Hanley was backing the Cruiser up to the Canadian border, leaving the hairs on our arms standing one end, with a seemingly endless line of the Rocky Mountains unfolding in front of us. Suddenly the whole thing became real. The first night jitters or maybe all the Monster Energy we’d been drinking left us way too tweaked to yield to nightfall and sleep, so 4 million candle power of lights led us on a five hour night run through the Glacier National Forest.