The 11th annual Rebelle Rally made an overnight marathon stage stop in Eureka on Saturday, Oct. 10, during its 2,500-kilometer navigation challenge across California, Nevada, and Utah. The Rebelle Rally is the longest competitive off-road navigation rally in the United States and it’s exclusively for women.
The 10-day event includes eight full days of driving and covers more than 1,550 miles. Teams navigate using only paper maps, a compass, a roadbook, and a teammate. All GPS-based navigation devices, whether in the vehicle or on cellphones, are deactivated for the duration of the rally. This year’s event hosts 45 teams from 24 states and four countries. Over the years, participants have come from across the United States and the world, including Austria, Germany, France, New Zealand, Japan, Australia, South Korea, Costa Rica, Mexico, Senegal, Belgium, Dubai, and Kenya.
The 2026 Rebelle Rally began on Oct. 7 at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway and concluded on Oct. 16 at Imperial Sand Dunes at Glamis, California. This is not a race for speed but rather a game of strategy, precision, and endurance. Competitors drive in one of two vehicle classes, the 4X4 class, featuring four-wheel drive with low range, and the X-Cross class, which are all-wheel drive vehicles without low range. Women ranging in age from 28 to 71 are competing in this year’s rally.
Every morning the teams get a new checkpoint guide, then use their paper map to plot their route, using longitude and latitude to guide them. When they find a checkpoint, they use a handheld tracker to record their score.
The course gets challenging and uses different color markers to award points. The Green Flag Pole indicates the team is on the correct path, Blue Checkpoint is a manned point that earns extra points, and the Black point is an unmanned, unmarked point that gives points based on how close to the bullseye they get.
Base camps travel with the rally and are located at the end of the route each day, providing bathrooms, showers, first-aid, mechanic stations, food tents, and lodging. Once or twice during the rally, teams will go to a Marathon Stage, where they camp overnight without the usual base-camp amenities. Eureka, the most northern stop in Rebelle Rally history, served as a Marathon Stage stop this year.
While in Eureka, participants set up tents on the softball field, with a first-aid station located near the bathrooms. Teams requiring mechanical repairs worked outside the ballfield and worked in the dark to repair their vehicles. The teams went to the Urban Cowboy for dinner and were able to tour the town on their way back.
These are women from all walks of life, taking time out of their busy lives to work through some very hard and difficult terrain with a teammate who helps navigate the course. At the end of the journey, these women have learned strength, resilience, determination, and lots of self-confidence.
