My how time flies. 2007 seems so long ago.
How many of you remember the precursor to the King of the Hammers? The first sanctioned race/rockcrawling event I attended in Johnson Valley was the First Annual Warn Rockcrawling Championship in 1999 - a far different type of event that included more than a few built but still street legal CJ's. Before then the two established trails were Sledgehammer and Jackhammer; Claw Hammer was still relatively new and largely unknown.
By the end of 99, we had been on several of the trails out there. There were more than two then. We ran Sledge, Jackhammer, Hell's Gate, Sunbonnet Pass, Wrecking Ball, Outer Limits, AfterShock, and Claw. After that is when they added Big Johnson, then Upper Big Johnson which turned the first section into Lower Big Johnson, Boulderdash, Backdoor, Spooner's Canyon, Turkey Claw, SOS, Full of Hate, Full of Love, Chocolate Thunder, Tack Hammer, lots of stuff in the Cougar Buttes area, a few new ones over on the west side, Bender Alley off of Wrecking Ball, Bloody Mary, Highway 21, and some others.
I was at the event you mentioned both days. The first day was on Wrecking Ball. It was an eye opener for a lot of the competitors. They made the course run up the trail and several competitors broke getting to the next part of the course. The next day the course was out around and down mine road over in what is now known as the ARCA pile. It was named that after ARCA used it for several years for rock crawling events. There is an endless array of easy access obstacles to set up the course on. I competed there in 2000.
The advancement of technology for the sport is astounding. The first folks competed on Boggers. Poorly, but compete they did. I currently live less that 10 miles from the Wooden Nickel Ranch where CRCA held some timed events which was actually the precursor to KOH. Especially since the founders of KOH are Dave Cole and Jeff Knoll. Knoll is who founded CRCA and rock crawling events for time. The rock pile on the ranch is also the first public debut of what became to be known as the moon buggy style rock crawler. The rig was a Nelson car named Tiny.
We competed there as well against some folks. Walker Evans, Cody Waggoner, Jon Bundrant and others.
Surprisingly, I actually found an article covering one of the events there. We are near the bottom of the page under the title "Finishing the Modified Course". My driver is Garry Hall.
https://www.rockcrawler.com/trailreports/crca/2002_oct/index.asp#Gallery
The thumbnails don't open but there is a pic of Tiny doing his best rock lizard impersonation in one of the galleries. Amazing for back then.