Moon Rocks
ZUKIWORLD Online visits the RCCA Goodyear/Skyjacker Rock crawling Nationals in Reno, NV
Story/Photo Jason Hutchison Editor: Eric Bewley
RENO, NV -We were planning our yearly trip to Easter Jeep Safari when we learned of the RCAA (Rock Crawlers Association of America) event in Reno the weekend before Easter Jeep Safari. We couldn’t miss this opportunity to spend some time up close and personal watching one of the fastest growing off road sports.
Reno itself is a great little town. All the perks of Vegas surrounded by great 4×4 country. We headed north on I445 out of Reno to see just what this was all about. As we rolled into the event we realized how big of an event this was going to be. There was people everywhere and 4x4s to go with it. The road to Moon Rocks OHV area is dusty graded road that leads to a rock out cropping of naturally eroded sandstone like rocks surrounded by soft sand and sagebrush. Minus the grueling wind that sent 40 mph dust storms ravaging through the course it was a spectacular day of sunshine and blue skies with an occational dust storm.
VIDEO:
Eddie C. of Spidertrax | .avi | 439 Kb Jason G. of Spidertrax | .avi | 3627 Kb Jason G. of Spidertrax | .avi | 3388 Kb
So the purpose of our trip was to focus on the Suzuki based vehicles but we couldn’t help but notice just how cool all the rock buggies were so, well we took pictures and some movies of all of them. Hope you enjoy them cause we sure did.
The first Suzuki guys we ran across was the Spidertraxs guys, Eddie Casanueva and Tom Kingston in their new XTS mid-engine full coil sprung buggy. This was one of the few mid engine buggies we saw. Spidertrax is reknown for building some to the coolest aftermarket Suzuki products on the market and their new competition rock buggy is a shinning example of their innovative design techniques.
The Karnivore Hummer H2 concept buggy from Avalanche engineering needs no introduction. Jon Gilleland and his team had a crowd watching them on every obstacle. Jon and his spotter was one of 3 buggies we counted that actually conquered the radical uphill B7 obstacle.
New with in the last couple years to the sport is famed off road Baja racer Walker Evans in his front and rear independent suspension Chevy pickup. We totally dug the suspension and Walker is running the new 40″ tires from Goodyear. It was really great to see an off road legend still competing and enjoying off road sports. Thank goodness we didn’t loose him to Golf!
Jon Bundrants rig sports an interesting power plant VW/Porsche powered. We thought we had seen everything. We are hoping the Volkswagen marketing scheme of “Drivers Wanted” applies for Jon’s buggy cause we guarantee we will be first in line.
The second SpiderTrax team buggy was pilot by Jason Gibney with Jason’s dad as the spotter. These guys make a great team. We got some great video of Jason piloting the STX buggy through some tough obstacles that yielded several rollovers that day. Make sure you check out the video too.
The only full frame samurai that we ran across at the event was this one piloted by the team of Dean Polluch and Karl Munford of Cedar City Utah.
