This year (2006) marked the second year I attended the WEROCK Rock Crawl competition in Goldendale, Washington. Last year, I learned a few things not to repeat. First, don’t drink heavily and expect to function well without sleep and in the heat. Second, bring a lot of water when working on the course and stay hydrated throughout the day. I must be getting old because my body can’t handle the abuse that it used to.
In order to avoid the 100+ degree temperatures as long as possible, we decided to take the longer scenic route from SR12 in Randle, to the FS 25 road (we should have taken the FS 23 road), past Mt. St. Helens, Mt. Adams, into Trout Lake, the Columbia River Gorge all the way to our hotel in Biggs, Oregon. This year we decided to get a hotel rather than camp at the Cottonwood like last year. Unfortunately we were a little late and we were unable to locate accommodations in town. Lesson learned for next year. At least we only had a 15-mile drive through the desert into our air-conditioned room with a shower.
After checking in and another stop for bottled water, we made a quick stop at the Stonehenge World War I memorial that’s about a mile from Highway 97 overlooking the Gorge. If you haven’t been there, this is a full size, true to scale reproduction of the original Stonehenge; all aligned to view the Summer and Winter solstice just like the original.
The first stop in town was the grain silo parking lot where everybody parks their trailer for tech inspection. We ran into and chatted with BZ and Dustin Webster. Walked around in tech inspection, checking out the rigs and then met up with the rest of our group.
On Friday night, the town scheduled a parade through town. Apparently the local police did not like the buggies driving through town. A big difference from last year when they had free reign throughout town. I heard a rumor that there was a new Police Chief in town. Just what you don’t want to do - piss off the competitors and spectators of the biggest money making event that comes this town. Anyway, the parade was lame compared to last year - just a slow speed cruise behind a city fire engine then onto the trailers at the other end. In 2005, there was junk cars set up in the street for the competitors to drive up and over which was a crowd pleaser for the locals. Not this year.
From the parade, we migrated down to the city sponsored beer garden where there was a beer trailer and a DJ. Interesting is all I have to say. After mingling for a few hours, the music was halted at 11:30 PM with the last call.
On Saturday, we were greeted by overcast skies that helped keep the temperature down just a little, but still over 100 degrees F. With my Camelback filled and batteries charged, I was ready for a day of photography.
Lil Rich did a good job of using the natural features of the land in laying out courses. There was plenty of action on all courses to challenge the competitors and satisfy the spectators viewing. Because of the number of competitors, in order to keep the event of schedule, both the Super Modified and Unlimited were mixed together and ran the A and B courses, while the Stock Modified ran on the C courses.
After the event, it was back to the hotel to wash off the dust before dinner. Once back in town it was on to a BBQ. Rob McKenney and Shannon Campbell provided an impressive spread of food for dinner including burgers, hot dogs, steak, salads and of course Tammy Campbell’s awesome homemade salsa.
Saturday night was a blast. We just hung out in the parking lot of the hotel and had plenty of entertainment. Lots of war stories throughout the night. No more biting on a dog’s ear for Nick Campbell.
The group almost had a guy from Bremerton (I forgot your name) walking through talked into eating a 10-pound bag of pasta salad within 30 minutes with his buddy for $50. Later that night, three Goldendale police cars and two troopers showed up at their motel unit because the people downstairs heard somebody “screaming like a girl”. Reports said it was pasta boy.
We made it through Saturday night on a few hours of sleep and onto Sunday. This was to be the hottest day of the year for Goldendale. Reports were that the temperature was 107 degrees. That’s a little too warm for us coastal people.
Sunday was another fun day in the dust. There was plenty of rock crawling action for everybody. There were a lot of hurting people that were casualties of Saturday night.
Thanks go out to Rob McKenney, Shannon Campbell their crews and families for the hospitality. I can’t wait until next year to do it again.
For a run down on the results and competition, you can visit http://www.we-rock.cc and http://rock.off-road.com (the article mentioned a guy in a kilt - I wonder who that was). There are also a lot of reviews on http://www.pirate4×4.com, http://www.snort4×4.com and http://www.nw-wheelers.com
