The weather was a little warm in the sun. The nights were epic.
Monday: Pulled into the heights around noon. There were a lot of people camped there for being a Monday. We posted up and started unloading all our crap. Our group forgot to bring firewood so we had to purchase KOH wood ($200) for half a truck bed. At night we took a ride over to Turkey Claw to watch the Jagged X crew testing a little. Wrapped Monday sitting around the jumbo tron watching Backdoor Challenge. There was not a huge fire in Hammertown this year. I heard a Jeep drove into the fire so the BLM pulled the plug.
Tuesday: 8:00am we loaded up to prerun the course.
We made it to RM21 before a RZR in our group broke a taper pin. For the next few hours we sat in a canyon fixing it. Once we rigged it up we limped it 20 miles back to camp. This burnt half our day.
While driving back my Teryx 4 went into limp mode. My parking brake light would come on and then it would not go over 18mph. I stopped many times to try and figure it out.
Once we got back to camp I tore the car apart and found a small group of wires melted together. This was totally my fault. When I was putting the car together i did not install a massive heat shield. The new Muzzy exhaust was too close to the loom and melted some wires. I found the hot for the 12v acc plug had melted into the parking brake warning light wire. I separated it and repaired the wire. At this point our day was spent fixing machines. So we decided to prerun the course at night. I took this photo with my new Sony A6000.
Wednesday: 7:30am we pulled out of camp and headed for RM 3. Today we are chasing the UTV race all over the Hammers. I was covering the event as well as shooting pics for Mitch Guthrie. After the racers all came through RM 3 we headed to the Sand Hill around RM 41. Sims was the 11th car off the line and the first to reach the Sand Hill.
Guthrie who started 28th was second to arrive.
From then on we spent the day watching Mitch work his way through rock trail after rock trail. He had such a huge lead we never saw another machine on the course. We spent that night hanging in the heights with all the UTV racers. We watched Chuck Norris come down Turkey Claw on a Honda 185.
Thursday: This was a hangout day. We did not do much.
Friday: 7:30am we took off for RM 5. Watching these cars fly across the dry lake with a heli 20 feet above them in awesome. Then we hit Sledge Hammer. We watched the leaders come through so we moved to Jackhammer. We spent the rest of the day watching the shit show there. Around 2pm we pulled out of Hammertown and headed home.