Outdoor Recreation Network - Spotting at the Vernal Goodyear Extreme Rock Crawling Championships

Spotting in Competitive Rock Crawling

Vernal, UT - July 2000

Short Cuts

by: Terry Howe

The driver and spotter can walk accross the gate to start their time on a stage. As long as the vehicle does not cross the first gate, you do not get charged the one point for a stop. We spent several minutes of this fifteen minute stage, the infamous B7, moving rocks. We didn't see anyone make this stage without winching or moving rocks. That's me with the blue hat and Curt with the white hat.

On the first attempt, the front end kicked over to the left. This is how two people rolled on this obstacle. The price for failure was high.

For the second attempt, I moved all the rocks over to the drivers side to keep the front end from kicking over. A fair amount of throttle was still required, so I'm standing out of the way on the right. The roar of the crowd when Curt crested that hill was the best reward I got all day.

The final section of Stage 7 on course B, the front end kicked over and we hit a flag. Before that flag, we only had one reverse on the stage.

Metal Made Rite

Metal Made Rite, L.L.C
781 Foster Road
Casper, WY. 82604
307-234-7430

Spotting for Curt "Revolver Shackle" Hildebrand in the Vernal ARCA rock crawling competition was really my first experience spotting in a competitive rock crawling event. I went to Phoenix to spot for another guy, but he broke two front axles and a rear drive shaft before he even got to the first obstacle! Fortunately, the experience with Curt was a lot more rewarding.

Curt's Jeep is fairly mild compared to other competitors. Curt drives a '94 Wrangler YJ with a 4.0L engine, AX-15 5 speed, NP231 transfer case with a TeraLow 4:1 kit, heavily gusseted Dana 35c rear, and Dana 30 front. He has a Lock-Rite up front and a Detroit in the rear with 4.56 gears. The front axle uses TJ shafts with the heavier duty 297 u-joints. For tires, he has 35" Goodyear MTRs on beadlocks and to clear the tires, his Jeep has a Rubicon Express Extreme Duty spring kit with Revolver Shackles and Revolver Z-Boxes all around. The Revolver Z-Boxes are a new suspension-enhancing product made by Metal Made Rite that are not yet in production.

The Jeep is not a tube frame rock buggy, but as we have seen in the past, a tube frame rock buggy is not required to win. I was pretty pleased with our 14th place finish for Vernal considering it was the first time we worked together. We made a few mistakes on the first day that could of been avoided, but generally, we worked well together. Several factors contributed to our success. Obviously, Curt's driving skill and his Jeep were the biggest factors. The contribution I made was with analysis and physical work.

Brains

The first person to drive an obstacle gets to walk the stage, everyone else can only look at it from the spectator area. From the spectator area, we would carefully analyze each stage from several different angles. We would watch other competitors drive the stage if we had time. Together, we would decide exactly what line to take, what rock to move and where to move it, and exactly where I would be standing at different times. We didn't need to vary from our script often which is a testament to our analysis. The results of our analysis are in our low score. We were one flag away from being in the top 10.

Brawn

Purists in the rock crawling may not like it, but rock stacking is part of ARCA competition. Allowing rock stacking is the only fair way to have a competition because the course changes as people drive through and what might be easy early on can become impossible or dangerous by the end of the day. To make it fair, the rules specify that any rock you move by hand must be moved back to the original location after you have completed the stage. If the vehicle moves any rocks that were not moved by hand, they do not need to be moved back.

Because of these rules, it sure helps to have a fit spotter because the spotter will do most of the rock stacking as well as the rock scrambling and vehicle shaking, pushing, and counter balancing. All of this has to happen on a 95+ degree day in the dry desert. I play ice hockey and indoor soccer every week, but I was still tired by the end of the day. A less fit spotter would not be able to help the driver as much.

Who is Driving?

In competitions, there is a wide variety of strategies used by driver and spotter. On some teams, the driver does all the driving, but on others, the spotter does most of the driving. I feel that the most success can be had when the driver is doing most of the driving. This frees up the spotter to move rocks and look ahead to the next obstacle in a stage.

When I wheel casually, I never spot unless asked. Wheeling competitively, the spotter must step in once in a while. There are tight spots where the driver cannot see the flags and rocks, the spotter must take over. Curt and I struck a pretty good balance of driver driving and spotter driving. Generally, I just kept an eye on him in case he was headed off in the wrong direction. It is hard to assign an exact percentage for how much a spotter drives, but I look at a spotter as mainly providing positive and negative feedback for the driver.

Before competing with Curt, I felt it might be possible for someone that does not know a lot about wheeling to drive and compete with a good spotter or for someone to have a spotter that does not know much about wheeling. I don't feel that way anymore though, it is a real advantage for both spotter and driver to be experienced four wheelers.

What It's All About

All in all, I had a great time. The hard work and planning really paid off with a very respectable score. Now that I understand better how Curt likes to work and I understand how his Jeep works, I see the potential for much better finishes. The event was far from perfect, but the sport is new. We'll be back in September for Farmington.