ROCKCRAWLER.com - Rough Canyon II 2002

There are many places that we drive through with our eyes on the terrain. Perhaps you passed by a small ravine and you thought, "man, I'll bet that would be some cool wheeling!" Rough Canyon is exactly one of those places.

Two years ago, the owner of The Shop Off-Road was out tooling around on a deer lease between Del Rio, TX and Lake Amistad (an International Lake on the Mexican Border) when he thought "This would be a great place to bring some others out to wheel."

That conversation along with the help of a Houston Area 4 Wheel Drive Club (SUAW 4x4) gave birth to a new event. Rough Canyon held it's inaugural event on March of 2001.

This year's event was much larger, with over 100 rigs, a huge equipment raffle, BBQ Dinner and a lot of wheeling. The areas around the ranch have the potential to be some of the toughest wheeling around. In fact, there appears to be vast untapped areas that could even lead to things like rockcrawling competitions and some serious Las Cruces-type rock trails.

On Saturday we hooked up with all the participants and event workers at 9:00 am for a drivers meeting and everyone got organized and we headed out to the trails. We found the harder trails to be fun and most of the participants had a good time. The only negatives we heard in regards to the trails were from the hardcore crowd used to extreme rockcrawling trails. They felt the trails needed some more guidance and technique in the building and design. But they all conceded that the potential is there and with some maturation this could/would be an event to pull everyone from the stocker to the super hardcore.

I was fortunate enough to make this trip with David Jones who is a professional photographer with Andrews Photography in Houston, TX. David was available to give some photography advice as well as supply some of the wonderful pictures for this gallery.

Please check out the pictures and see what you think.

And now, on to the
[ PHOTO GALLERY ]