Eastern US Nationals # 1 Hannibal, Mo

The weekend of April 26 and 27th marked the beginning of the WeRock east coast rock crawling competition season. Team 311 made the 12 hour drive from northeastern Ohio to Hannibal, Missouri, and arrived Friday afternoon.

First on the agenda was tech inspection. We passed through tech with a few minor changes to make to the Jeep before the next competition, and then headed to the competition area to check the courses out.

Day 1:

After the 9:00am drivers meeting, we received our running order. There were 10 stock modified competitors, and the running order was broken into 2 groups of 3 and one group of 4.

We headed to our first course: C2. We were last to go in our group of 3, so we were able to watch the 2 competitors ahead of us to see how they did. The first competitor didn't finish the course and the competitor ahead of us finished with a score of 14.

The entrance of this course had us climbing a rock face. The flex of our Full Traction suspension and the grip of our Pro Comp tires helped us make it through gate 1 with ease. We made our way through some loose rocks to the top of a hill. At the top we had to pull forward and back up to line up for the downhill crawl. At the bottom of the hill, we had to make a hard right hand turn and we were running out of time.

My spotter told me to just pull forward and finish the course in reverse! We lined the Jeep up where we needed it to be and gassed the heck out of it to bump over a huge rock. With the new front axle from Solid Axle, I was confident I could gas the Jeep to get us out of a jam. The judge began his countdown of 10 seconds as we were feet away from the finish cones. We gassed it just enough to finish the course with 3 seconds left and a score of 12!

On to course C3, and after watching all of the competitors ahead of us, no one was able to make it through the first set of gates. With the rain the night before and a huge rock at the beginning of the course, we were just like the rest of the class. We timed out on this course with a score of 40.

Next up: course C4. This course had us flexing the Jeep over a huge rock and dropping off the other side then making a left turn over some loose rocks to an area that had about a 4 foot ledge we had to climb. Once on top of the ledge, we didn't have much room to move the rig, so we had to back down the other side of the ledge. We had to turn to the right and head back the way we came.

As we approached our 3rd and final gate, we were down to 2 minutes left. I had to gas it a bit to bump the Jeep over another large rock and head to the finish. There was a huge rock beside the finish gate that we had to make sure we didn't get hung up on the rock and that we didn't hit the cone.

My spotter lined me up to where we needed to be to clear the cone and told me to gas it to bump up the hill. As I gassed it, we were somehow able to pivot the Jeep on that rock and it lined us up perfectly with the finish gate. We finished with 16 seconds left and a score of 13.

Our last course for the day was C1. Looking at the scores the other competitors turned in on this course, only 2 scored less than 30, so we knew all we had to do was finish it and we would be in a good spot. Gate 1 was either a side hill rock climb or up the hill climb for the bonus gate. We took the bonus line and cleared it, so right now we were sitting with a -10. The Pro Comp tires helped us make our way over another rock face with ease towards gate 2, which had us going down about a 6 foot 80 degree rock ledge.

As we brought the Jeep through the cones of gate 2 and started to climb down, I felt the rear end of the Jeep get light. I tried to gas it and save it from a roll over, but I was unsuccessful. On our lid we went. The Jeep landed on the driver side so we were done. I was ok after the roll. I made sure my Mastercraft 5-point harnesses were pulled tight before I went onto the course.

The Jeep fared ok as well. Some damage to the driver side fender, driver side rear wheel well and the passenger side corner of the tub. We made it through 2 sets of cones, so our score was 38.

As we watched the other classes finish for the day, we heard them announce the standings for the stock modified class. We were sitting in 2nd place! Not bad for a roll over and not finishing 2 courses. From 2nd place to 6th place was only separated by 24 points, so we knew we had to step it up on Sunday if we wanted to finish in the top 3.

Day 2:

On the second day of competition, the running order is reversed, so that put us starting first in our group. We also run the same courses, which were either set up completely new or in the reverse location of the day prior.

Our first course was C2. We bumped over the little hill climb through gate one successfully and made our way over the large loose rocks to make the turn to climb to gate 2. Once we got to the bottom of the climb we were stuck. There wasn't enough room between our course and the banner tape for us to make a wide enough turn and we timed out with a score of 39. Only one competitor was able to finish that course with a score of 21.

Onto course C3, and that’s when it began to rain. This course had us coming in at an angle up a rock face to clear gate 1. The bottom of the rock face was muddy at this point. A competitor ahead of us had leaked oil on it, too, so we were fighting a losing battle. We couldn't even make it to gate 1 before we timed out. Only one competitor finished this course. The rest scored 39s or 40s, so we figured we were still in a good position.

Next up was course C4. Our strategy was to enter this course in reverse so we could make the turn easier to head to gate 1. That all changed when a huge rock was moved right in our line and we couldn't move, so I had to quickly turn the Jeep around and drive up the hill.

With a few back ups, we finally were lined up to where we needed to be. We had to make our way through a tight rocky section on our way to gate 2. We got hung up a little bit, but nothing the gas pedal couldn't help us out of.

By the time we made it to the 4 foot ledge to side hill, we shut off the ARB air locker and took the rear axle out of gear on the Atlas transfer case to dig around the cone, but we ran out of time, and received a score of 39. Less than half of the rest of the class even finished that course, so we kept our fingers crossed on what place we were in.

Last course for the weekend was back to C1, where we rolled the day before. They changed this course significantly compared to Saturday. We had to climb up a loose rock face to get to gate 1. We were hung up on our control arm mounts and skid plate so we decided to go a different route. We went up an alternate way, made it through gate 1 and timed out with a score 39.

We waited until the end of the competition to find out we were in 6th place, which meant we made it to the Stock Modified Shoot Out. A shoot out is the top 6 teams have one last course to advance in placement. Anything can happen.

We made it through the course and through gate 1 with no problems. As we started our climb through gate 2, we slid into the cone. We backed down the rock face to get in position for the climb through gate 3, which was another large rock we had to bump the Jeep up and over. However, on the other side, we only had about 6' to land the Jeep or else we would roll down another ledge.

I gassed the Jeep as much as I could but we just couldn't get up and over this rock. We were hung up on our skid plate and control arm mounts. We ended up timing out with a score of 38. That kept our 6th place position, 31 points behind 5th place.

Click here to view all pictures from this event. Our next event is the weekend of May 31st in Dayton, TN.

Back to Team 311