Robinhood150

Yeah, I know this is 6 months late. I've had gallery software problems until now...

Back in August I had the opportunity to go watch the CalRocs rockcrawling competition up at Donner Lake ski resort, near Lake Tahoe, Ca. It was quite an event that was full of carnage, destruction and even some exhibitionism. That's right, a Yotatech exclusive (well, it would have been if my software was working and people didn't post a bunch of pictures on pirate already).

The first thing we saw was a pile of rocks with a tubed jeep crawling around, surrounded by various buggies. But if you look carefully, these were ordinary buggies, these were the first of the newly form Formula Toyota class of buggies. This pile of rocks was the first section of trail for the formula toys.


Walking further up the mountain the course unfolded before us. It was huge and we were immediately greeted with carnage. This buggy was trying to climb this hill and finally succeeded in flopping backward, smashing up the stinger in front.



Next, we found Scott from Rockstomper piloting his buggy. In this picture he is still going, he is not on his side.


You always know when a rig flops because the crowd cheers and applauds as if there was a wardrobe malfunction at a superbowl halftime show. Then everybody goes running to see what happens. This is the aftermath of flopping. The engine oil drains to the cylinders and the excess oil burns off.


This is a tacoma, there were 2 competing


Shortly after this picture was taken, Becca from the redbull buggy pulled off the most impressive roll EVER.


She was about to time out and decided to floor it in a last ditch effort to reach the finish line. About 5 feet from the finish she hit a bump wrong which rocked the buggy over onto its side. The buggy then rolled toward the audience where I was standing. Everybody including me dove out of the way and the buggy slid about 20 feet down the rock face and then slid over a 10 foot cliff. She rolled a couple more times and finally stopped rubber side down.

Here's a Jeep grand cherokee


Here's a FJ40


It was a fun trip. You get to see the buggies up close and personal, sometimes a little too personal. We also noticed how environmentally aware the organizers were. The event is held on private property and every drop of fluid that is spilled is documented and cleaned up.

Here's a link to the cal rocks website and the 2005 schedule: http://calrocs.com/.

Here's the rest of my pics: http://www.robinhood4x4.com/gallery2/CalrocsDonner04/