December 2003 - Florence Junction Marathon

Phoenix, Arizona

Photos submitted by Chris Villarreal, Erik Malm

How does running 8 of Florence Junctions toughest trails in 12 hours sound? Some may say crazy but when I heard about the friendly competition the Arizona Undertakers were planning I knew I had to attempt it and I knew the team I needed to assemble.  The rules called for two rig teams, if your rig became disabled you would pull of to the side and fix it if possible.  The run would start at 8am and end at 8pm.  If a faster team approached you needed to let them by.  Other than that it was be safe and have fun.

Back to the team.  The other rig in my team was Brian Fox and his black Samurai.  He is a fellow BTG club member and knows what a Samurai could do.  We also have similar setups save for the axles so with our combined knowledge we should have been able to fix anything that broke.   For my spotter I chose Erik Malm, another good friend who used to drive the big V8 power Zuk you may have seen in some of my trip reports.  As a bonus, Erik can take some good pictures, nearly all of the ones you see here were taken by him with my camera.  He ended up spotting me on one or two obstacles, and a few from in the cab as we were going up.

(Click for larger images)

Here's the starting point, the entrance to Lower Woodpecker.  When we started we kind of followed the leader over some of the comp lines but people just started bypassing the comp lines.  We watched for 10 minutes or so as the first rocky outcropping started hanging up some of the rigs, Brian and I both looked at each other and decided we'd just go around the stuck rigs to get the ball rolling (Lower Woodpecker is wide with a  lot of different obstacles).

This put us in the lead and the first ones on Woody's wash.  My old suspension would have never allowed me to drive the crack (I tried).  This time through I had enough flex to get the front end up on the walls without tipping over.  My first two attempts didn't work.  The rain the previous day and the dew from the previous night made everything wet and muddy so the drivers side tire kept slipping into the hole.  My third attempt I adjusted the line a little more to the drivers side and nailed it. 

Brian did pretty much the same thing except his rear tire slipped into the crack as he was coming out.  A quick push by me on the back of his cage was all he needed to continue forward.

We completed Woody's wash right around 9am.  The next trail was Upper Woodpecker, the pictures above are from the Firehole.

Brian at the top of the Firehole.  We hit all the side obstacles we could find and made it to the top of the trail by around 9:45.  I have done this trail in as little as 20 minutes just running up the middle in 2wd most of the way but in the spirit of the competition we tried to make it hard.

Next up was Highway to Hell.  

Brian coming up the first crack

The next big ledge.

Most people drive around this obstacle, we went up it although with the wet tires and mud it wasn't easy.  I took 3 or 4 stabs at it before I found some traction.

The next obstacle was the double  waterfalls.

We had a hard time here, right before the squeeze on H2H.  I had to really whip the squirrels to power up this muddy ledge.  Brian's rig didn't want to climb it (I did muddy it up pretty good).  After trying to push and trying multiple lines we just broke down and winched him forward.  This spot was also the location of our sole mechanical issue, a hose clamp that held Brian's steering shaft from sliding too far away from his steering valve came loose.  I fixed it with a stubby craftsman and we moved on.  We emerged from the trail around 10:15 and could see some rigs at the start of it as we headed out of the exit road.  Next up was Upper Ajax.  We never stopped for any pictures and made it through in about 15 minutes.  After talking with some of the spectators we headed over to Axle Alley. 

On the way up to Sunset Point we found a group of kids struggling to pull a quad up the side of the hill.  Not sure how it got down there as no one was injured but we stopped and offered to winch it back up the hill.  The road was pretty narrow so I couldn't get into a position to do a straight pull.

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