CALROC’s Boulevard Brawl
Suzuki Rock Crawling Teams Perform.
Editor: Eric Bewley Photo/Story: Jason Hutchison
Boulevard, CA -If you take the I-8 around 80 miles east of the hustle and bustle of San Diego CA there is a sleepy town nestled in the hills and rocks of the surrounding high desert called Boulevard. The terrain surrounding Boulevard is dry, hot, and covered with scrub brush and residual boulders which is a perfect setting for a CALROCS rock crawling competition. The drive to Boulevard consists of a 90 minute trip from San Diego through some beautiful dessert country. As we headed east on I8 towards Boulevard in late spring the desert is alive from the recent winter. As we all know San Diego is pretty much a desert year round so it’s great time to head into the hills to see lots foliage blooming only to die off in the hot sun soon to arrive in the coming summer months. OK enough of that hippie crap. We came here to see some rock crawling action!
As we exited I8 into Boulevard it’s a straight shot into a private ranch hosting the first event of the CalRoc’s point’s series for 2004. We were greeted by a great group of people from the CalRocs team in a cozy campground with lots of trees and a small lake which was a real privilege in the desert. Today is Friday and it’s a pretty mellow day filled with tech inspections and lots of exciting talk and speculation at tomorrows challenging course. We had an opportunity to walk the course with several competitors and a common sentence kept reoccurring “This is gonna be fun!” The group at CalRocs did a great job of setting up a very challenging course with steep drop offs, aggressive climbs, and sharp turns on the porous rock out cropping. This course was difficult to walk let alone navigate in a vehicle. This course was definitely going to test the competitor’s skills.
We had a great day hanging at the CalRocs Boulevard Brawl but enough of our chitchat check out some awesome picks we got of the competitors.
It’s always great to see a Suzuki and we were completely stoked to see one of the rescue vehicles/EMT was one of our fellow Suzuki enthusiasts. Here is a couple shot of this stout little samurai coming to the rescue of a rolled competitor.
Another favorite of ours was the team from Trail Tough. We caught some great shots of Brent Bradshaw and his “Crustacean” rock buggy sporting a normal 4 tires instead of the typical 8 tires. Brent was attempting a tricky steep ledge that troubled most of the competitors. We were lucky enough to capture a short video of Brent attempting this obstacle. Make sure you check it out.
Here are some great shots of another Suzuki team from one of our favorite club’s Pirate’s of the Rubicon. Glenn Bonner has a great looking Suzuki Samurai running a Grand Vitara V6. Can you say Sweeeet! We also got some great footage of Glenn pushing his Sammy into a nose dive off of one of the obstacle. Check out the articulation of his rear suspension as he easily navigates the drop.
We saw one other Suzuki team at the CalRoc’s event and managed to catch some great action shots of them trying to climb a challenging up hill section that ended up in a roll over. No damage though. They just flipped the Sammy back over and moved on to the next obstacle. Check out the short movies of them revving up the squirrel’s to burn rubber climbing a solid rock cliff.
We noticed Team Voodoo had an unusually quit rock buggy. Upon further investigation we found that Team Voodoo he creatively changed their Toyota based and powered buggy to propane power. The cleverly fitted the green propane bottle behind the seat and managed to get about 14 minutes out of each canister.
As much as we try to keep our focus on Suzuki vehicles we couldn’t but help notice all of the great buggy’s at this event. It seemed like everywhere we turned there was action going on. Here are some pictures of the other competitors we were lucky enough to capture in action on film. We got some pretty decent video clips too so be sure and check them out too!
It was a great day in Boulevard, CA, and the Team from CalRoc’s put on a awesome event with a great course full of challenging terrain to keep all the spectator’s cheering throughout the day. Get out there to your local rock crawling event and support this growing sport. Trust us these events Rock you don’t want to miss them!
