October 10, 2016 – Hurricane, UT – Trail Hero continued Friday with trail rides across the southern Utah landscape outside Hurricane. Friday also included the Low Range Off-Road and Red-Desert Off-Road Bounty Hill climb, which proved to be a bit harder than everyone anticipated.
Bounty Hill was open for anyone to run for $10 for 10 minutes. All entries went directly to Utah Public Lands Alliance to help keep our public lands open to the public. The course consisted of a sand dune drop to a V-notch climb on rock. After a hard left at the top of the V-notch there was a deep sand hill climb to a waterfall about 5-feet high. Once up the waterfall competitors had to take a hard right and down a 7-foot drop off a waterfall, down a sandy hills and hard right up an incline to the finish line.
Cody Waggoner was first to tackle the sand covered rocks. It gave him an added advantage as there were no 40-inch tire holes in the sand. He did manage to break his front locker on the 5-foot waterfall, however he had the fastest time of the day as only two participants were able to finish the course. Craig Stumph was the only other participant to complete the entire course.
Multiple people attempted the course, but the 5-foot waterfall above the sand hill became the hardest obstacle to climb after 40” tire holes dug out the bottom.
Brian Kille attempted the hill in his brand new Red Dot car with paddle tires. He had the fastest time to the waterfall, but could only dig holes with the rear wheels. After two days of Bounty Hill being open, Cody Waggoner won Bounty Hill with the fastest time with 81 seconds, winning the $2,000 purse.
Steve Nance maneuvering through the gates on course A2.
Maxxis Tires Friday Night Rock Crawl presented by Moab 4×4 Outpost brought invited competitors to an exhibition of W.E. Rock rock-crawling under the lights. Competitors were from the Unlimited Class, and only ran three courses set up with multiple bonus lines within each course. The object of each course is to drive through the gates aka cones, or if desired, drive through the bonus line. Points are added or deducted based on if cones are touched, reverse is used, and if bonus lines were completed successfully.
The top four competitors advanced to the Shoot-Out course, and those competitors were Justin Keilman, Jesse Haines, Tracy Jordan, Justin Hall.
The Shoot-Out course contained four bonus gates, and four regular gates. Justin Keilman, Jesse Haines and Tracy Jordan all tried the biggest bonus line on course, which was 20 point bonus, and required driving to the top of a boulder and driving backwards with rear steer turned off the boulder’s sheer face. All three made it through the gate, but not without driving over a cone.
Justin Keilman and spotter Jody Everding came out victorious after the Shoot-Out winning by a narrow margin of 6 points.
Justin Keilman and Jody Everding work hard to win hard!
