Five on Four – part 5, the "Summit"

Three hours in.  The grade sloped up gradually, and then steeper.  There were pine trees because at high elevation it’s cooler and it supports different vegetation.  We started going down.  You could see very very far into the distance from up here. 

It got steeper, and rocky.  Down.  Switchbacks.  Almost straight down on one side, and almost straight up on the other.  Boulders to go around.  Where you could not go around them, you had to pick a line and place your wheels carefully.  Rockcrawling a section.  Past the boulders step on the gas.  Steep down, step on the brake.  More boulders.  Consequences on one side.  Hundreds of feet down to the next step or plateau.  Don’t look.  

This is the “summit” crossing.  A race vehicle was stuck here and 20 race vehicles backed up behind him.  I sailed right through, making several passes of race trucks busted up on the rocks.  That’s Baja racing.  Go as fast as you dare.  How do you know when it’s too fast for the terrain you are on?  You crash or break your machine.  Now you are where no civilian vehicle can get to.  You are sleeping there.  Hopefully, you don’t freeze.

We descended.  Cut back right.  Descend.  Cut back left.  The valley floor got closer.  Mountains turned to hills.  Rough rocky hills.  Jagged rocks long since forgotten out there, daring you to go faster and so they can show you what they can do to your futile machine.

Finally, dirt.  Sand.  More rocks.  Dirt. Some of it suspended in the air.  Miles went by.  An hour since the top of the summit.  Sand dunes approach us, sucking the power from our drivetrain.  Five miles to go and someone pushed to pass on us.  We shift to the side.  Someone in our class.  Damn!  That was only the second one in our class to pass us so far.  We had passed two. I reckon we are in fifth place out of seven starters.  It’s the same position we started in.  We stayed on him.  It turns out that driver would not finish this race.

We were close to the road and where we’d meet our chase team.  I call in on the radio giving them a heads up that we were close, if they didn’t know by other means already.  300 yards from the pit a trophy truck is on our butt.  I pull over and he passes with a 1000-hp roar.  I make a huge mistake.  I pull back onto the course too soon.  A baseball-size rock is flying through the air like a bullet from his roost.  We have no windshield. 

I watch the meteor fly right into my face.  I had just paid $80 for a new shield on my helmet because the last one had microabrasions that caught the light.  Now I realized why they cost so much.  The rock hit me square between the eyes.  The sound it made inside my helmet was a violent bang. It did not break the shield but did gouge and dent it.  The rock fell into my lap and onto the floor where it rolled around for 400 miles.  It’s tight quarters in the cockpit and you cannot reach the floor while you’re sitting in the car strapped in.

If that rock hit me in the chest….

I pulled up to my team and Marie and I unharnessed and crawled out the windows – beat up.  No doors – roll cage instead.

When I first considered racing a UTV I figured it would be a lot easier.  The top class of racing trucks have 40″ tires and 36″ of travel on their suspensions.  They glide along the rough terrain without the driver feeling much of it.  But not UTVs.  We feel everything.  It’s like being in a giant popcorn machine.  It beats you up.  Neck, back, kidneys, elbows and knees even.

When I rode in a UTV as a co-driver from Vegas to Reno with Driver Jamie Campbell, I was supposed to be in the car for 500 miles.  I didn’t make it.  I prayed to get out or I’d puke in my helmet.  I was getting bounced around in there and had no control over what the driver was going to do.  I was calling the turns from the GPS which only increased the motion sickness. 

I got out at mile 250, took a 100-mile break, and got back in at 350.  Fortunately, there was another registered driver on our team and he was there to take my place.  The finish line at mile 500 could not have come soon enough.  I had to get out – right then.  A couple more miles and I was going to barf.

My wife Marie took all that abuse and never complained.  I felt bad when we’d hit something big or violent – which was often.  She’d just grunt and groan as I did, and we carried on.

Kevin and Dustin got in.  Kevin driving.  But the team found an axle joint (CV) boot was disconnected in the rear and the grease for the joint had spun out.  This will lead to overheating and failure.  We had to fix it.  Randy and Jason smeared grease into the boot, slid it back on, and used a heavy wire tie to secure it.  Would it hold?  We’ll see.

We lost ten minutes.  Off they go from mile 155, headed to 211 where we’d see them again.  We headed 60 miles down the highway, racing to get there before they did.  Once there we got a text message from Kevin’s spot tracker – 

“Mile 165 Left rear wheel fell off.  Need axle nut, axle and hub.”

We looked at each other wide-eyed as we processed the message…