06 H3
a.k.a. "The Jackal"
- Messages
- 9,358
- Location
- Meridian, ID
After work on friday I went down to Johnson Valley to hit the Hammer Trails. I'm not sure if the east coast guys know much about "hammers" but it is world class rock crawling. Its where King of the Hammers is held every year and is known as the most grueling race which combines high speed desert and rock crawling into one. An example of how tough this race is how many people do not finish the race. People build $250,000 plus buggies and only a handful finish. 23 out of 128 people passed the finish line and 6 of the 23 still ended with a DNF for timing out. With that said they are racing to win while we are not so we are not as hard on our rigs but it is still some of the hardest rock crawling trails around.
This has been my 3rd hammer trip with squeaky and 4th overall, as I took my brothers jeep one time. Both times I went out I ran Clawhammer trail. Its definitely not the toughest trail out there, but still much tougher then a trail like John Bull. First time I ran it with IFS I basically got pulled up the trail, the 2nd time I did it, I had my motor about to blow up, knocking like a bastard and I drove horrible, broke a rear driveshaft, dented a door, put a hole through my diff cover, etc. This time I ran clawhammer and I nailed it! No spotting, taking the hard lines and walked the entire trail with ease.
On claw, we ran into Jesse Combs, the famous girl on TV, who 4-wheels, welds, fabricates and kicks ass. She was out there in an Ultra 4 practicing for the Hammer race in February.
Heres her race car...
Here are some pics on Claw...
After running claw we decided to hit Sledgehammer. Its a gnarly trail! Very short but gnarly! Every rig we saw on that trail was a trailered buggy but one and that was a trailered jeep. Either way its a classic of the hammer trails and one of the first.
Heres the Hammer trail sign for sledge and jack
Heres me in front of the sign, I normally go on snow runs in shorts but with no doors on I had to be bundled up in 35 degrees. Dont ask about the beanie I borrowed it from Zach
Coming up one the first obstacles
Coming around the corner for the big undercut climb where the plaque is.
They put a plaque on the toughest obstacle on some of these trails.
My buddy getting up the plaque
Heres where all hell broke loose! As I am climbing up the plaque, Im starting to climb, shocked im about to make it BANG! Stock rear axle shaft snapped. At this point I winch up, mind you the plaque is one of the few spots you can actually winch, other then that there are no winch points and winching off a vehicle in front of you is tough because its a tight small canyon that winds its way through. After I winch up my winch broke. To get me to a spot to change the shaft we now try to use a strap, the strap broke...now I gotta get to the spot which luckily I did. As we start buggies start passing by us. They were cool and not douchebags like ive dealt with in the past. This was around 6PM. We get the shaft out quickly but the broken part is still stuck in there and its a c clip axle so I pull the cover, save the fluid, and start pulling it apart. We cant get the shaft out still so we need to pull apart the other side so we can jam something through the entire axle to pop it out. As we do that we have it secured in the air but my buddy's dad wanted more then just a hi lift and bottle jacking holding it up so he got my buddy's hi lift and hi lifts the other side. Sure enough it was unstable and BAM the entire ****in truck fell off the bottle jack and hi lift. Now on the ground we get it secured again, luckily no one was under the truck or we would be dead. With the other shaft removed we need to pop it out but we dont have anything long enough. After pondering what to do my buddy runs to his jeep grabs a camping chair pulls the pole off of it and luckily its long enough! We hammer it out. Then we smashed the pole against a rock to get it to make a hook to scoop it out from the other side, with it out we put the truck back together. While this is happening we have buggies passing us, one of which backed up into my front fender. Luckily the fenders are like pillows, absorb the impact and goes back to its normal shape. While changing a shaft on the trail sounds much easier writing it down on a forum every damn thing we did was a challenge in less then ideal conditions but we ended up moving again around 2AM. At this point I need to get past an obstacle that took 4 toyota buggies an hour to do. With no spot to winch off of and even if I did I had a broken winch I had to get through. Sure enough I did after lots of backing up repositioning, etc. No we are about 500 feet from the top of the canyon, I am going straight and not even on an obstacle SNAP! Broken front stub shaft. I have never broken a shaft in my life, including front IFS CVs and yet I manage to break 2 shafts within a half a mile of each other. At this point **** it! My buddy pulls me up the last little rock garden. Now I get to the mailbox!!! This mailbox is well known at hammers and reaching it in a hummer is on my bucket list. So after getting through I made it up everything minus the plaque which I was crawling up and almost up when I broke a shaft and then the end which I could of done even with an open front but with a broken shaft it would bind rip out the ball joints. So as we get to the mailbox I left my axle shaft with it as did everyone else, which included numerous front and rear axle shafts, driveshafts and an entire exhaust system. Along with that there are plenty of stickers that list all hardcore groups such as rock zombies, pirate4x4, hardcore off road company stickers and I went into the console and stuck a HUMMER4x4OFFROAD sticker on there!!!!! From now on every guy who comes up that trail will be like WTF is a hummer doing up here so it should represent us well as long as some dickhead doesnt take it off but Ill be back with revenge one day with another sticker in hand and maybe a THORparts sticker.
Here are some pics of the carnage
This is my "no shave november, its 5am, I smell like diff fluid, I havent showered in 2 days, I have been up for 22 hours, Im stoked yet im so tired I almost dont give a **** at this point" pose.
Leaving my shaft at the box! using the same pose as before lol
This has been my 3rd hammer trip with squeaky and 4th overall, as I took my brothers jeep one time. Both times I went out I ran Clawhammer trail. Its definitely not the toughest trail out there, but still much tougher then a trail like John Bull. First time I ran it with IFS I basically got pulled up the trail, the 2nd time I did it, I had my motor about to blow up, knocking like a bastard and I drove horrible, broke a rear driveshaft, dented a door, put a hole through my diff cover, etc. This time I ran clawhammer and I nailed it! No spotting, taking the hard lines and walked the entire trail with ease.
On claw, we ran into Jesse Combs, the famous girl on TV, who 4-wheels, welds, fabricates and kicks ass. She was out there in an Ultra 4 practicing for the Hammer race in February.
Heres her race car...
Here are some pics on Claw...
After running claw we decided to hit Sledgehammer. Its a gnarly trail! Very short but gnarly! Every rig we saw on that trail was a trailered buggy but one and that was a trailered jeep. Either way its a classic of the hammer trails and one of the first.
Heres the Hammer trail sign for sledge and jack
Heres me in front of the sign, I normally go on snow runs in shorts but with no doors on I had to be bundled up in 35 degrees. Dont ask about the beanie I borrowed it from Zach
Coming up one the first obstacles
Coming around the corner for the big undercut climb where the plaque is.
They put a plaque on the toughest obstacle on some of these trails.
My buddy getting up the plaque
Heres where all hell broke loose! As I am climbing up the plaque, Im starting to climb, shocked im about to make it BANG! Stock rear axle shaft snapped. At this point I winch up, mind you the plaque is one of the few spots you can actually winch, other then that there are no winch points and winching off a vehicle in front of you is tough because its a tight small canyon that winds its way through. After I winch up my winch broke. To get me to a spot to change the shaft we now try to use a strap, the strap broke...now I gotta get to the spot which luckily I did. As we start buggies start passing by us. They were cool and not douchebags like ive dealt with in the past. This was around 6PM. We get the shaft out quickly but the broken part is still stuck in there and its a c clip axle so I pull the cover, save the fluid, and start pulling it apart. We cant get the shaft out still so we need to pull apart the other side so we can jam something through the entire axle to pop it out. As we do that we have it secured in the air but my buddy's dad wanted more then just a hi lift and bottle jacking holding it up so he got my buddy's hi lift and hi lifts the other side. Sure enough it was unstable and BAM the entire ****in truck fell off the bottle jack and hi lift. Now on the ground we get it secured again, luckily no one was under the truck or we would be dead. With the other shaft removed we need to pop it out but we dont have anything long enough. After pondering what to do my buddy runs to his jeep grabs a camping chair pulls the pole off of it and luckily its long enough! We hammer it out. Then we smashed the pole against a rock to get it to make a hook to scoop it out from the other side, with it out we put the truck back together. While this is happening we have buggies passing us, one of which backed up into my front fender. Luckily the fenders are like pillows, absorb the impact and goes back to its normal shape. While changing a shaft on the trail sounds much easier writing it down on a forum every damn thing we did was a challenge in less then ideal conditions but we ended up moving again around 2AM. At this point I need to get past an obstacle that took 4 toyota buggies an hour to do. With no spot to winch off of and even if I did I had a broken winch I had to get through. Sure enough I did after lots of backing up repositioning, etc. No we are about 500 feet from the top of the canyon, I am going straight and not even on an obstacle SNAP! Broken front stub shaft. I have never broken a shaft in my life, including front IFS CVs and yet I manage to break 2 shafts within a half a mile of each other. At this point **** it! My buddy pulls me up the last little rock garden. Now I get to the mailbox!!! This mailbox is well known at hammers and reaching it in a hummer is on my bucket list. So after getting through I made it up everything minus the plaque which I was crawling up and almost up when I broke a shaft and then the end which I could of done even with an open front but with a broken shaft it would bind rip out the ball joints. So as we get to the mailbox I left my axle shaft with it as did everyone else, which included numerous front and rear axle shafts, driveshafts and an entire exhaust system. Along with that there are plenty of stickers that list all hardcore groups such as rock zombies, pirate4x4, hardcore off road company stickers and I went into the console and stuck a HUMMER4x4OFFROAD sticker on there!!!!! From now on every guy who comes up that trail will be like WTF is a hummer doing up here so it should represent us well as long as some dickhead doesnt take it off but Ill be back with revenge one day with another sticker in hand and maybe a THORparts sticker.
Here are some pics of the carnage
This is my "no shave november, its 5am, I smell like diff fluid, I havent showered in 2 days, I have been up for 22 hours, Im stoked yet im so tired I almost dont give a **** at this point" pose.
Leaving my shaft at the box! using the same pose as before lol
