Since Jack and Scott placed in the top 20 in last years KOH race they had a spot for the 2010 race. They actually hit the road the weekend before the race to get some pre-running in.  I followed Pat and Jay out on the Wed. before the race.  We usually get off I-10 at Desert Center, head north on the 177 then west on highway 62 which keeps you up high so you don't have to climb any really steep grades. If your tow rig has a lot of chest hair you can take the 10 down thru Indio an then up Morongo valley but be prepared for a massive hill climb just before Yucca Valley. 

It had poured the night before so the area around Hammertown was mostly mud.  After getting the motor home stuck we retreated to just outside Hammertown and quickly got the motor home stuck in the soft sand instead.

The dogs wanted out early Thursday morning so I got a picture of the sunrise. I had towed the Jeep out mainly because I didn't think there would be time for buggy wheeling and that shelter of the hardtop would be nice if the Hammers weather turned ugly.  As it turns out Thursday and Friday were both great weather days with only a slight hint of wind to go with the sunny skies.  That afternoon we followed Chad and Mark out to the remote pit that we would be manning.  The pit was far enough out that we decided to drive the motor home out  to use as a base in case the weather was bad.

We spent the evening out at the remote pit and close to dawn people began arriving to set up their pits.  By 8am the area looked official.

The racers covered the 13 miles between the start line and remote pit quickly and most of them streamed thru without stopping.

Scott and Jack passed us and headed straight for the first rock trail and stopped on the return trip for a quick bolt check and a splash of fuel..

Once our car was out of the pits we had time to kill.  They cars needed to cover another 50 or so miles before returning to our pit so we headed up to the first rock trail to see if we could see any action. We got to the top of the hills over looking the first rock trail (Crowbar) and to our amazement there had already been 90 cars thru the checkpoint. it had only seemed like 30 or 40 had gone thru the pits. The remote pit is between the two small hills in the first picture above which is looking southeast.  The second panoramic shot is looking southwest down Crowbar.

There were two broken cars on the mountain, this one with a bad starter and another car a ways back with a broken link.  We had actually passed one of the racers from this car in the desert as he was jogging back to the remote pit.

While we were walking back a straggler passed us heading down into Crowbar.

Mark's Toyota and my Jeep can be seen in the distance one peak over.

On the way back to the remote pit we passed the parts runner, he was moving a little slower on the return trip. Hopefully he got his part.  We were not allowed to offer assistance save for medical.

We started cooking some lunch and shortly after that the leaders started filtering thru the checkpoint.

I started manning the binoculars watching for our cars.

Jack and Scott rolled thru followed by Nicole Johnson.  Both took on fuel and had a few loose bolts but nothing major. Nicole's GPS was giving them issues and we did a quick patch job on the power wires before sending them off.  Jack and Scott had fallen back a bit from their 13th start position (maybe 18th car thru the pits?) with Nicole about another 10 cars back.

With our pit duties done we hightailed it our to sledge to try and get a view of the action.  We caught our friends and eventual winners Loren and Rodney as they headed into the trail.  Jack and Scot were a few cars back when they left our pit so we knew they'd be along soon.

The trail and surrounding hills were crawling with spectators and we eventually gave up trying to get to the big ledge.

Jack and Scott rolled thru about 15 minutes later as we sat near the entrance to the trail.  this was about mile 115 of a 135 mile race so things were looking good.  Little did we know that there were two cars stuck at the ledge creating a bottleneck that would hold up our car for quiet a while.  We headed back to the finish line in Hammertown thinking 284 would be in shortly.

There was a large gap between the 13th car and the next batch of at least an hour.  Our club/pit team anxiously awaited our car and they finally showed up as the sun began to set, the 15th car in and a time adjusted 20th place. Of the 100 cars that started I think around 46 actually finished before 10pm that evening.

3 years and 3 finishes - one top ten and two top 20's, not bad for a 7 year old trail rig!  Good job Jack and Scott and congratulations to our friends Loren and Rodney (an the rest of their crew) from the 667 Rockers!  They raced in the LCQ (Last Chance Qualifier) to get a spot in the main race and then drove like mad men (beating a lot of big names in the process) to take 1st place by 28 seconds!