We don't usually cover competition at 4WD&SU, but this year I headed out to Johnson Valley for the King of the Hammers race. Fellow staffer Christian Lee was there, too.
If you haven't heard of it, King of the Hammers touts itself as the world's toughest desert race, and although the Baja 1000 is much much longer and Dakar is longer still, King of the Hammers has a unique format that forces competitors to negotiate terrain at both ends of the off-road spectrum.
Each Hammer trail is run, along with some new ones not named after a type of heavy percussion tool. Spooner canyon got its name after a couple of 'wheelers got stuck there overnight and had to do some spooning to keep warm. Embarassing? Yep. Worthy of naming the canyon after? Absolutely.
Beyond the creepy crawly trails, there's no shortage of high-speed terrain to test the mettle of the drivers and their rigs. To do well at King of the Hammers, you've to to know how to handle both high- and low-speed terrain.
Base camp was at the familiar Means Dry Lake. This time, it wasn't completely dry thanks to recent rainstorms. Parts of Means were a muddy quagmire. A few hundred RV's, tow rigs, and semi trucks turned Means into a temporary city. It was a mess trying to negotiate.
If I took one thing home from KOH it's that off-roading is alive and well. Each type of off-roading is becoming more and more sophisticated, and equipment development continues even in our currently tough economy.
I took something else home from KOH: a re-affirmation that my favorite type of off-roading has nothing to do with big events, big budgets, or big egos. My favorite aspect of off-roading is escape. I go off-roading to get AWAY from people! While I love challenging terrain and I respect those who drive and build extreme trail machines for competition, I love exploring and I love solitude even more. Give me a fun trail and a group of 3 or 4 vehicles and I'm in off-road nirvana.