Goodyear Extreme Rock Crawling Championships & ARCA

Goodyear Extreme Rock Crawling Championship

Phoenix, AZ - March 2000

Short Cuts

by: Randy Burleson

Course One Phoenix 2000 ARCA, continued

CLICK HERE to go back to coverage of Stages 1-3 or HERE to go on to coverage of Stages 6-7.

Stage 4

Stages 4 and 5 were so close together that it was hard to tell where one stopped and the other started. They were both situated in a narrow portion of the canyon next to a rocky slope that provided natural grandstand seating for the vocal crowd. These two stages were arguably the toughest of Course One's challenges, and the throttle-down, bouncing, breaking attempts were rewarded with crowd approval almost as much as the elegant successful crawls through these stages. With such challenging terrain, teams often started with a gentle approach, only to end up throttling down and trying to force their rigs through what they couldn't crawl. As a result, this stage probably claimed more broken parts than any other in competition.

The big Cherokee gases out of the Stage 4 hole.
Randy Burleson

Competitors had to pilot their rigs through a water-carved slickrock course that tested their articulation, drop down into the canyon floor and immediately hug the left canyon wall, then scale a smooth but way-steep ramp that crested onto a massive boulder on the left side, and a large crevice on the right. This crevice was located about one wheelbase-length from the bottom of the steep ramp before it, so the only successful route seemed to be to keep the left front tire atop the left-side boulder and drag the rest of the rig up and over... all without sliding to the right into the crevice or the left into a sure high-center on the boulder and carnage with the canyon wall.

Randy Ellis crawled his Sammy through the first part of Stage 4 but was stopped by the sloped face with the boulder atop it. He and his spotter worked and worked this face, but wisely opted to winch their way through, finally pulling out of the stage just before timing out. The little Samurai was the polar extreme in size compared to the chopped-top Cherokee that followed. Even with a longer wheelbase and nearly four times the displacement as the Samurai, Ronald Hunt's full-sized Jeep was stopped cold by the same upslope. After several heavy throttle, auto-tranny slipping attempts, they were running out of time, but their last attempt somehow succeeded where the others had failed, leaving the spotter, Ed Timmese, diving for cover as the Cherokee vaulted forward to exit the stage just in the nick of time. The crowd roared its approval to this violent, but effective approach.


Sam Steinman spots Mike Porter's YJ up a good-looking line... Randy Burleson	...but the Wrangler still slips off to the right, with gruesome results. Randy Burleson

JP Snider's Jeep YJ, sporting a newly-repaired left axle from an earlier stage, got sucked into the same hole at the end of Stage 4, and worked it hard, with crowd-pleasing air, until the Jeep broke again -- dramatically. A brittle snap ejected a u-joint cap 75 feet into the air. The same impact took out a ball-joint, and the Jeep settled slowly to the ground, wheels toed in, obviously broken. Soon after this Wrangler was cleared from the course, that same hole gobbled up Brandon Gillen's Wrangler's front right wheel, firing a u-joint cap into the wall as it wiped out an axle.

The Scorpion slips offline too far to the driver's side, onto the axle tube.
Randy Burleson

After all the repeated Jeep carnage, the crowd was anxious to see what the custom-built Scorpion could do. Even though this rig shares almost zero parts with Jeeps, the same slope followed by a hole caused them to time out. They did eventually complete the stage, with no breakage, a few minutes after time had expired.

The Pirate team shows the successful line.
Randy Burleson

When team Pirate4x4 pulled up in their black FJ40, the crowd expected more of the same that they'd seen from the similar wheelbase rigs that had tried -- and failed -- to complete this stage. Bob Roggy drove through the stage and hung up his front axle tube on the rock with his rear tires spinning on the steep slope -- in the same position as those before him. His spotter, Lance Clifford, waved him off, backed him down, then brought him up and over, keeping his left front tire spotted to the crest of the boulder. The crowd was pretty impressed with this clean exit.

CLICK HERE for more pictures from Stage 4, since there was far too much carnage to pack into one article. Stage 4 stopped almost every vehicle, lunching indiscriminately on veteran Baja racers and rock crawlers alike.

The Scorpion kisses the canyon wall. Check out the O.D. green license plate!
Randy Burleson

Stage 5

ARCA alotted 10 minutes for each team to clear Stage 5. This stage picked up immediately where Stage 4 left off, threading trucks through a tight, rocky corridor that leaned them left into the cliff's face, then routed them down into the canyon floor and around a blind corner. The obvious route out of the canyon floor was blocked off and flagged as out of bounds, so teams had to climb a pile of three-foot boulders up onto a shelf, squeezing between two massive, truck-sized monoliths, then cranking a hard right to escape the differential-grabbing rocks before the exit gates. Stage 4 may have crippled more vehicles, but Stage 5 claimed its share, and stopped the vast majority of teams from pulling through in the alotted ten minutes, even under winch power.

This obstacle was brutal, and it seemed to be attainable only through brutality. Chris Durham piloted his CJ10 over the differential-hugry rocks in Stage 5 with utter confidence in his massive running gear. He watched over his shoulder, looking down through the cut-out bed bottom as his rear axle pumpkin bashed, dragged, skated, and surfed from one boulder to the next until the tires wrenched the truck successfuly out of the stage. The Cherokee that had worked so hard and narrowly escaped Stage 4 in time apparently used up all of his luck on that stage, because Stage 5 denied passage, and ate up the left side of the Cherokee's body, then snapped a front axle.

The Revolver Jeep flies through the Stage 5 squeeze.
Randy Burleson

Curt Hildebrand's jeep made a clean run of Stage 3, but ended up pulling winch cable on Stage 4. This seemed to prime them for an all-out assault on Stage Five, where they rocked and bounced from side to side, nearly rolling, before catching traction and vaulting out of the canyon bed, Revolver shackles-a-flexing. This may have been the cleanest run of the first day.

The Scorpion rolled just before the final gates of Stage 5.
Randy Burleson

The Scorpion had a tough time working through the bouldered notch in Stage 5, but their high-tech suspension seemed to keep the wheels on the ground well enough to force them through, after several repeated tries. In the end, less than yard from the exit gates, the Scorpion dropped its wheels down into a hole and found an edge of a boulder that nobody else had trouble with... and the suspension just articulated and stretched... and stretched... until... plop, the Scorpion lay on its side. The team scrambled to self-recover in time, and winched and muscled their rig back upright. The Scorpion wasn't the only high-dollar rig to stumble on this obstacle; Walker Evan's race-ready S10 Blazer finished up it's last spare driveshaft working the rocky slot of Stage 5. Out came the winch cable.

The Pirates of the Rubicon surmount Stage 5, preparing to go aground on the rock in the foreground.
Randy Burleson

Lance and Bob attacked Stage 5 in their FJ40, clawing and grinding their way to the top of the notch, only to hang up their Dan 60 rear axle. Bob stayed on the throttle, and worked his spinning Boggers down into the dirt nearly to their hubs before they caught and wrenched the Cruiser forward through the gates and free of Stage 5.

Randy Ellis' Sammy was the only rig I saw make the driver's side line.
Randy Burleson

Even with wider-than stock Dana 44 axles, Randy Ellis had more room to weave his small Samurai through the gates and rocks, and he made excellent use of this agility in Stage 5. No other vehicle that I saw successfully navigated the left side of the boulder pile leading to the squeeze rocks... and many tried. The angle of the rocks and the loose soil smacked almost all of them down but this Suzuki. With the help of his spotter and father, Randy Ellis threaded the needle and pulled through Stage 5 with time to spare.CLICK HERE for more pictures from Stage 5.

CLICK HERE to go back to coverage of Stages 1-3 or HERE to go on to coverage of Stages 6-7.