The Overland Directory
Driver training, recovery courses, field repair and wilderness first aid, taught by people who do it for a living.
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Sharing a single-lane gravel road with loaded logging trucks, which is a skill and not an attitude: pull over, stop, give way in both directions, never stop where you cannot be seen.
After that, tyre repair and winching from trees, since the two failures a long way inside a working forest are a cut sidewall and a soft shoulder.
Training is the cheapest upgrade there is. It costs less than a bumper, weighs nothing, and works on every vehicle you will ever own.
Common courses
Small classes and real terrain.
A trained driver breaks less, gets stuck less and recovers more safely. Most vehicle damage on the trail comes from speed and poor line choice, and most recovery injuries come from rigging that someone guessed at.
Most experienced drivers say the recovery day alone was worth it. Rigging a winch pull safely is not something to work out for the first time when you are stuck.
No. Most introductory courses are designed for stock four-wheel-drive vehicles, and learning what a stock vehicle can do is the point.
From Bar Harbor at 54 feet to Katahdin, Baxter Peak at 5,268. Altitude decides what your engine, your brakes and your lungs have to work with, and how late in the year the passes open.
Pass, road and summit elevations are the figures published by the agency that manages them. Town elevations are the town’s or county’s own figure where it publishes an exact one; the rest are from the U.S. Geological Survey (3D Elevation Program at the place’s official coordinates), retrieved September 18, 2026. Every source is listed at the foot of the page.
Reviewed September 25, 2026. Conditions, closures and rules change; check with the managing agency before you travel.