Inside the Gambler 500, an Off-Road Rally for Picking Up Trash
The massive cleanup clears tons of garbage from Oregon’s public lands
A monster truck fashioned from a hearse. A Geo Metro made of two front ends welded together. A red SUV with a fire-breathing dragon’s head fused to the hood. If you saw these DIY vehicles tearing through the high desert of central Oregon, “you could mistake it for a scene from a Mad Max movie,” says , a 43-year-old photographer from Ohio. But the , which Kaiser attended along with some 2,000 others last June in Redmond, just north of Bend, isn’t a postapocalyptic cinemascape. First staged in 2014 by a ragtag group who explored the woods in cheap cars, the annual off-road rally doubles as a massive trash cleanup. For three days, drivers in imaginatively revamped rigs clear large pieces of garbage—mattresses and couches, abandoned boats and rusted camper vans—from hundreds of acres of public land, which they then transport to designated landfills. “What intrigued me about the Gambler community was the way it brought together people into off-roading and people who care about environmental stewardship,” Kaiser says. There’s no prize for gathering the most junk, but organizers are always upping the ante. The 2022 Gambler’s trash haul , and participants hope to top a million at this year’s edition in July. “There’s always this tension around how public land is used, and I think that’s a healthy debate to have,” Kaiser says. “But the Gamblers are giving more than they take. They’re invested in making sure that the outdoors are clean and accessible to everyone.”
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A Mercedes-Benz covered in gold foil, with matching longhorn hood ornament? Welcome to the Gambler.
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A furry friend surveys the scene
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Lapping the minibike course
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A member of Seattle’s Yummy Yacht Club team sips wine from a trunk dispenser
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A souped-up Beetle competes in the HooptieX race
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Heads or tails: Metro conversion by Ben Davies (left) and Dave Mickelson
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Taking in some live music
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A small sample of the trash haul
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Gathering on the final night
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A fire-breathing Nissan
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Green bean