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BFGoodrich
National
Rockcrawling Championships
Las
Cruces, NM
  Four
wheeling is different things to different people. Some think 4
wheeling is a gentle drive on dirt roads in the forest, others like to
dash down sandy arroyos or climb huge sand dunes. But to the
participants of the First Annual "BFG Rockcrawling Championship",
it's hammering their most prized possession (their 4 wheelers) into
huge boulders and rock waterfalls, just so that you can claim the
title, "King of the Rocks".
The
contestant list reads like a Who's Who of 4 wheeling, Rod Pepper,
Harold Off, Jim Peterson, Sonny Honeger, John Curries, and Shannon
Campbell, are just some of the participants. Even non-wheelers could
tell by looking at the Las Cruces Hilton's parking lot that something
big was happening.
 The
action started as the contestants split up into two groups. One group
headed west to the "Trail Course", Apache Canyon (also know
as Tabasco Twister). The other group headed north to the "Canyon
Course", the famous Broad Canyon. Most of the Broad Canyon group
felt lucky to draw this trail. Broad Canyon is a boulder filled
canyon, but not the hardest canyon to drive, or at least that is what
they thought at the time. What they found was a seven-stage course
over huge boulders, bigger rock walls, off camber ledges and generally
the hardest rockcrawling that most had ever seen. Some stages were so
hard that a lot of the contestants just took one look and went around
(taking the maximum 10 points). But by the end of the day, almost
every stage had been done conquered by at least one team.
Tabasco
Twister wasn't much easier, minutes after starting, teams started
using their only allowed "Time Out" of the day. Reports of
broken axles, destroyed lockers, torn tires increased as new teams ran
the first stag. The second stage was the easiest, but one jeep still
broke three axles and a locker. All seven stags had different
challenges and each claimed more medal.
 Saturday
the groups switched to run the canyon they had not run. Each group did
better on the second day's canyon than the first. Practice is
everything in big time rockcrawling.
The
top 12 teams; (a tie made it a Bakers Dozen), went on to run on
Sundays trip into Patzcuaros Revenge (known locally as "Pet-squirrels
Revenge"). Stage one was over Shark's Tooth. StageTwo through "The
Nemesis 1", the third stage was climbing "Nemesis Two".
Stages four and five were two more waterfalls. Finally Stage 6 was a
large waterfall with a big mud puddle at the base.
When
all was said and done only Jeeps finished the day, with Jeff Waggoner
of Nebraska finishing first place with the least points. But in my
book, anybody that had enough guts to try to run this event was a
winner. Excellent driving, good sportsmanship and a willingness to
help each other showed the high caliber of the contestants.
 
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