Evolution of King of the Hammers

I’m fortunate enough to be able to attend KOH this year. Went to the championships in Reno last November. Can’t wait.
 
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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.
 
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I used to wheel with these guys. Heavy metal is Will from sisoffroad... good group of guys from ct/ nj/ ny area. Eric Miller made a few appearances at Rauch for the group runs. He’s got other great videos too.
 
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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.
 
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I guess I should have said that Sledgehammer and Jackhammer were the two best known trails in 1999 with Clawhammer and some other goat tracks known mostly by a small minority who at the time were generally considered the lunatic fringe of the offroading world. ;)

Your comment about Boggers being used in the early competitions reminded me that one of my friends who competed in 1999 with his CJ-7 was running Swampers. Another friend was running a stripped down XJ with regular mud terrains with last minute hand cut siping. I still have the siping tool.
 
I guess I should have said that Sledgehammer and Jackhammer were the two best known trails in 1999 with Clawhammer and some other goat tracks known mostly by a small minority who at the time were generally considered the lunatic fringe of the offroading world. ;)

That is a bit more accurate. We spent 3 hours trying to find Sunbonnet Pass the first time we went there to run a trail. I told Garry he had about 10 more minutes of me following him while he wandered aimlessly around the desert before I was going to call it quits and go home.

Your comment about Boggers being used in the early competitions reminded me that one of my friends who competed in 1999 with his CJ-7 was running Swampers. Another friend was running a stripped down XJ with regular mud terrains with last minute hand cut siping. I still have the siping tool.
It didn't take long for them to figure out that very few Swampers were good rock tires. It didn't take the rest of us long to figure out that MT/R's were.
 
Let me tell you, this is the king of the hammered

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