Night crawling.
Bronco
Gunning a Ford Broncothrough Fish Creek Wash in California’s Sonoran Desert is going full Baja mode in every sense, a fat contrail of dust jetting from 35-inch tires. Nothing unusual about that. Except it’s spilled-ink black outside, demanding a keen lookout for the truck-killer boulders as they suddenly loom into view.
This story originally appeared in Volume 10 of Road & Track.
I wasn’t sure about any of this. Venturing off-road after dark tends to be the sport of teens, fueled by dares, peers, and beers. Things usually go tow- truck-and-911 wrong. Already we’ve performed a (daytime) desert rescue that would impress the French Foreign Legion. A darker near-disaster is just up ahead.
Our wingman, Marco Hernandez, a 4×4 builder, author of The Overland Cook, and enthusiastic explorer of nighttime trails, was right. Every driver, outdoors fan, or big-city wanderer knows that night changes everything: a heightened, altered state is wound into our caveman DNA, triggered by perhaps-fatal danger from all the things we cannot see. There’s a reason most horror movies save the juicy stuff for after sundown. Yet night, especially for a lifelong owl like myself, is also a beautiful thing.
“Seeing those canyon walls go bright when you turn on the lights—I think it’s exciting,” Hernandez says.
We’d already cruised these badlands on a winter morning in Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, California’s largest, with its wildflower super-blooms, Kumeyaay Indian pictographs, and epic trails for hikers and four-wheelers. At night, with photographer Tom Fowlks clutching the Bronco’s shotgun grab-bar, we feel like we’re getting away with something: This is Junior Johnson out-running the law with a load of moonshine, a commando raid, or just the closest a civilian can get to running the Baja 1000. The Bronco Wildtrak is up for any action fantasy, especially for east-of- the-Mississippi types who rarely encounter such wide-open public spaces. Measured against the 4×4 stagecoaches I grew up with, the Ford’s 2.7- liter twin-turbo V-6 jolts you into modernity with 330 hp and 415 lb-ft of torque (a Porsche Macan GTS has 405 lb-ft). That engine can sound stressed at full honk, but this Bronco can really scoot. It easily powers through the loose stuff. The upcoming Bronco Raptor with 400-plus hp may demand a bigger sandbox.
From the moment I secure this two-door Bronco with an optional Sasquatch package (total: $53,650), onlookers have questions. Mainly, how long did I have to wait? It’s nice to see any Detroit Three car get the Tesla treatment, and it’s because the Bronco hits its marks so well. Beneath that winsome Tonka Beach skin—masculine yet inclusive, not Hummer toxic—there’s real body-on-frame substance, with almost none of the old compromises.
People can debate the off-road chops of the Ford’s independent front suspension versus a JeepWrangler’s beefy, better-articulating solid axle. But there’s no debate on-road, where the Ford’ssuspension and rack-and-pinion steering provide more precise and pleasurable feedback than the Jeep’s recirculating-ball unit. On idyllic roads en route to our meet-up in Borrego Springs, I realize I’ve driven here a dozen times. But never at night.
In the dark, the good-times Montezuma Valley Road turns diabolical. Dun-colored sage brush skitters across the road like a bristly animal, making me catch my breath and reach for the brakes. Deer-and steer-crossing signs raise my heart-beat another notch. In lumbering 4x4s of yore, this would be another scary midnight movie. But considering its go-anywhere powers, the Broncotracks smartly through a final descent, the comforting lights of Borrego Springs rising like embers from the valley floor below.
As the day turns to twilight, we get a taste of the mystery to come.
Tom Fowlks
Come morning, Marco guides us to Sandstone Canyon, part of a primeval labyrinth in the park’sCarrizo Badlands and Split Mountain areas. These are heroically scaled remains of ancient seas, lagoons, deltas, and lakes. Pastry layers of sedimentary rock have been squashed, resculpted, and whipped into soaring peaks by incursions from theGulf of California and prehistoric Sea of Cortez, with further carving from river floods.
Airing down the Bronco’s 35-inch tires in preparation for desert sand.
Tom Fowlks
The Sonoran Desert is beautiful but alien. Tourists may coo over the wildflowers, but don’t be fooled: This landscape will tolerate your presence, but it would just as soon kill you. In June 2016, Anza-Borrego saw a crispy 122-degree high, a county record.
Leaving pavement for the arroyo, we air down the Ford’s 35-inch, beadlock-capable Goodyear tires to boost traction. Time-saving valve deflators drop us to 15 psi, no futzing required. This once-suffering Boy Scout can hardly believe Marco’s wish-list gear. His Patriot Camper, a roughly$40,000 Australian two-wheeled off-road trailer, has a solar panel, a 120-amp-hour battery, a generator, a water tank and heater, an air compressor, a kitchen, and more.
Our guide, Marco Hernandez, tackles the desert in a V-8 Wrangler with an astoundingly well-equipped camper trailer.
Tom Fowlks
The Bronco’s Trail Turn Assist brakes an inside rear wheel to help pivot in tight quarters. It also lets the Bronco spin, though Marco dings the feature from his Tread Lightly perspective. My donuts gouge deep ruts, which is why Rivian dropped a similarly scarring Tank Turn feature on its electric trucks.
Our inbound trip immediately goes to hell. I’ve wanted to see the park’s mud caves, but they’re aways off. Sensing my disappointment, Marco casually radios about Diablo Drop Off, an elbow-shaped rise with views of the Vallecito Mountains. Who wouldn’t want to see a Diablo Drop Off? Marco, piloting his SEMA-worthy Wrangler Rubicon 392 (rooftop tent, refrigerator, you name it), decides to head up first, though we’re concerned about that trailer (1400 pounds, dry) in deep sand.
“I’m going to try it,” Marco says, inscribing his last words.
Marco, who documents adventures on his YouTube channel OVRLNDX, storms up the hill with panache, until a young doofus in a Toyota 4Runner decides to descend simultaneously. Marco gives up momentum and has to pull off the path. On this ever-shifting terrain, today’s sand is more like quicksand. Trailer becomes boat anchor. Even this armored-up Rubicon is soon buried to its axles. We have one winch, but it’s on Marco’s truck, facing uphill at a cockeyed angle.
It takes straps and shovels, one jack, two winches, two and a half hours, three vehicles (the Bronco and a passing Jeep Gladiator), four recovery boards, and some Pythagorean theorem to extricate Marco’s rig and trailer and get them pointed downhill. Two orange recovery boards are still out there, sucked down near the center of the earth. In hindsight, it’s the most skin-of-teeth 4×4 rescue I’ve been part of without having to call for a $2000 tow.
After that escape, anything this place throws at us is a walk in the state park. We’re free to marvel at Sandstone’s cathedral walls as they narrow to near slot width. They’re just wide enough in places to squeeze past, two wheels on a ridge tagged with tire and body scrapes. This canyon floor looks strange in places, like a walkway through a fake Disney nature park. I learn the surface is a puree of old and new granite, flushed down from mountains. Some sediment came all the way from the Grand Canyon, deposited after the ancient Colorado River carved it out.
We make camp at the trail’s terminus. While Marco’s rig transforms into Glampimus Prime, we head out for a photo-and-fun run. I get a last sunset glimpse of these stoic rock faces, a buzz-cut of cholla cactus and ocotillo on top.
The Bronco’s LED light bar beamed a path of concentrated daylight.
Tom Fowlks
Headlamps alone won’t cut it out here. I flip an auxiliary toggle to fire up a Ford Performance light bar. Whoa! The scene turns so bright, I expect an announcer to call Aaron Judge to the plate.
Where standard lamps pitch a roughly human-height beam, this modest row of LEDs illuminates canyon walls to their peaks. The day-for-night switch is an instant confidence boost, revealing huge swaths of peripheral terrain and eliminating that spooky, disorienting tunnel effect. Night is also best for the Bronco’s unimaginative interior. It’s comfortable, but fit for a city-slicker SUV, with none of the Wrangler’s outdoorsy vibe.
I do my best Parnelli Jones impression on the flats, aided by smartly tuned Bilstein shocks, and clamber up some rock piles. The Bronco fairly yawns over obstacles that 90 percent of buyers wouldn’t imagine tackling. Tom and I hop out, awed by big-sky constellations that I’d forgotten existed. A hat-tip here to the Ford’s screen-select-able, 360-degree area lights for protecting our ankles from holes, red diamond rattlesnakes, whatever’s out here.
Again, we’re feeling good about our night time wheeling skills. Again, the desert has other ideas. We head back, worn out and practically smellingMarco’s cooking. But this trip is taking longer than it should. Suddenly we’re hemmed in by walls that aren’t pretty sandstone but a disfigured concretion with warts and boils of stones. (As noted, ordinary things can go all Evil Dead after dark.) Yep, we’re lost in a black, featureless desert, out of radio range. We have plenty of fuel and water but little else. We double back to Fish Creek Wash. But it makes no sense. Until we remember getting out of the truck. Somehow, after we hopped back in, we overshot our canyon.
After 30 minutes of retracing, Tom spots it. A speck of a sign at the very edge of our LED-enhanced vision: Sandstone Canyon. During the day, the entrance seemed hard to miss. At night, without that fusion-bright roof bar, we might have been stuck out there till morning.
Marco preparing a feast at his camper trailer’s kitchen. The man wrote a cookbook for over-landers. We ate like desert-roaming kings.
Tom Fowlks
Marco, a mellow Californian with three off-road-ing daughters and a white beard halfway to ZZ Top length, is relieved at our return—and ready for dinner. The Overland Cook is filled with big-flavored dishes that are doable in the wilds. He prepares achile de arbol salsa, roasting tomatoes, chiles, and other ingredients on a skottle, a wok like, cast iron disc on three legs, powered by a Coleman burner. South African farmers first repurposed harrow wheels into these cookers, big enough to feed an army, yet portable and easier to clean than any grill. The surface sizzles with a fragrant mountain of care asada, which Marco folds into fresh tortillas and blankets with the chile de arbol and from-scratch guacamole.
I uncork a lip-smacking Californian Syrah that I happened to pack (hey, we’re not animals out here).Firewood crackles on a portable pit. Our ground tent is looking welcome.
After sunrise, Marco wards off a 33-degree chill with strong coffee from a Bialetti. Dawn light pours honey down canyon walls, like nature’s drive-in. But our show isn’t over. First, a winding return through the canyon, more benign in daylight. Next, a final Bronco busting before the rules and boundaries of pavement. A hotel and a hot shower in PalmSprings. And a run to the King of the Hammers race, back into the dust from which we came.
At night, the already-otherworldly King of the Hammers takes on a chaotic, postapocalyptic vibe.
Tom Fowlks
Hammers
On a Mojave hillside in California’s Johnson Valley, under a crescent moon and milky stars, a procession of off-roaders grinds up the rocky horror called Chocolate Thunder. It’s one of many sadistic stabs at these 2.5-billion-year-old rocks at King of the Hammers, surely the world’s gnar-liest one-day desert race. Only these folks aren’t competitors. Veteran Raul Gomez already took his first “Race of Kings” win after 6 hours, 57 minutes, and 13 seconds of tube-framed abuse. These people are, or were, spectators. Now they’re the late show, charging into steeply pitched gladiator battle in their own lifted, mongrel rigs.
Take away the heavy machinery, including our Ford Bronco Wildtrak, and this bleak amphitheater looks downright biblical, perfect for an impromptu stoning. But this rabble is friendly and stoked, shooting off low-angled fireworks, talking trash—“Backup!” “Go Home!”—or whooping encouragement as drivers tackle Flintstones-size boulders and spin up a final tantalizing ascent. Bonfires dot the hill, an expectant crowd gearing up to party all night and sleep it off in Hammertown, the sprawling motor-home city that glows on the dry lake bed below.
Victors summit about six feet from our photographer’s tripod and my own kneecaps. We see it all: buggies and beers, Wranglers and winches, skyscraping pickups, tube-frame Frankensteins, UTVs with LED whip-lights flashing though choking dust. One driver, spotting our camera as he crests the peak, steers with his right hand and flashes devil horns with his left.
Striking scenery, traversed at extreme speed.
Courtesy of King Of Hammers
For fans of pavement motorsport, what can I say? Imagine attending an F1 or NASCAR race and seeing the track thrown open to all comers—sans helmets, safety inspections, or even license over-sight—to try their own hand as crowds egg them on. That would never happen, for a hundred sensible reasons. Yet here we are. And the sheer, transgressive fun makes an average road race seem as straitlaced as a chess tournament.
King of the Hammers was born in 2007 at a Chili’s in San Bernardino, a beer bet among local off-roaders to quickly negotiate trails with names like Jackhammer and Sledgehammer (hence, a “King of ”). When roughly 60,000 fans and participants aren’t crowding today’s grown-up event, Johnson Valley OHV Area lets anyone tackle its red-rock mountains or cruise its brushy lake beds and sandy washes. That area stretches over 96,000 savage acres, roughly half of that shared with the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center.
Breakdowns and bad ideas are common. Hammers co-founder Dave Cole tells me the Spooners section was named after he and rescuers found two Marines spooning in a back seat, trying to stay warm in single-digit night temperatures. “They had two vehicles with one axle left between them,” Cole says.
Purpose-builtmachines tackle terrain inhospitable to wheeled vehicles.
Courtesy of King Of Hammers
Johnson Valley is the perfect sandbox for over-grown boys and girls to smash toys together while making cool motor noises. For this Ultra4 racing, think automotive biathlon. Drivers and rigs must excel at both Baja-fried dessert cooking and rock crawls. Especially at Hammers. With new trails, 227 miles, and a 14-hour time limit (a backmarker’s average of just 16.2 mph), these mythical rocks could make Sisyphus weep.
“If it were easy, we’d call it NASCAR,” Cole says, as we watch mammoth-tired buggies motor past. A helicopter, one of three covering the race, promptly buzzes Cole’s Raptor pickup.
The go-for-broke Gomez Brothers—four drivers, including Raul’s son Darian—get their freshly built 850-hp buggy onto the lake bed for only an hour of testing before the race. Cutting it so close, the team forgets a high-speed gearset. That limits Gomez to 88 mph on the flats and leaves him helpless as three-time winner Jason Scherer flies past.
“It was depressing,” Gomez says later. “But I thought I’d run a slower pace in the desert and catch him in the rocks.”
Those obstacles reliably snare or cluster racers, which end up beached sideways or flipped like run-amok RC cars. At Indy, they’d send the tow truck and ambulance. Here, drivers (and sometimes fellow competitors) are their own AAA, winching themselves upright or unstuck. On the last of three discrete course laps, 70 miles across a climactic hellscape, Gomez and Ford pilot Scherer trade the lead in thrilling style.
Spectators get close enough to fist-bump competitors as they roar by.
Tom Fowlks
Gomez hates winching alone, and not just for the exertion. Last year, he was “this close” to victory when his cable broke. This time, determined to earn his team and family their first Hammers crown, he bounds up the dry waterfall ledges of Wrecking Ball and takes the most epic path down, only to end up high-centered on a boulder, wheels dangling six feet in the air.
“There’d be no speculation that I went around this thing,” he says, even if the ballsy move cost him dearly.
With Scherer coming up behind, Gomez has to hop out twice, wrap a cable around a hefty boulder, and extricate his rig. He takes the checkered flag well before sundown, with a 15-minute lead.
“It was a crazy race of attrition for sure, the hardest Hammers course I’ve ever run,” Gomez says. “Cole always told me, if you just toned it down to 70 percent, you’d actually win races.”
Raul Gomez took the overall win in the Unlimited 4400 class.
Courtesy of King Of Hammers
How hard was this year’s course? Only 26 of 101 racers complete it. Gomez averages 32.5 mph throughout. Others aren’t so lucky. Dozens of drivers are still out there, struggling to finish, as the Mojave goes black. Gomez commiserates.
“I’ve had to finish this course at night a few times,” he says. “You kind of zone out, tune out the danger. But you also don’t see the scary stuff at night, so it might be easier, not seeing that big ol’ dropoff on one side.”
As dirt-caked machines straggle into darkened pits, I meet Paul Ashworth, mechanic with MWAK (Monkey with a Knife) Racing. This crew was all about road racing—from longtime Spec Miata driver Brian Reid to IMSA and ALMS—until falling in love with grassroots off-road competition, its passion and camaraderie. Ashworth says the fledgling team’s Chevy LS3-powered, 600-hp buggy has moved from 74th place to 33rd, but it’s tough out there.
“Our main goal was just to finish this year,” Ash-worth says wearily. “They’re just trying to bring it home.”
Vaughn Gittin Jr. nabbed sixth place driving this tube-frame monster.
Tom Fowlks
As for Ultra4 and its steep learning curve, Ash-worth says, “It’s awesome, but it is pretty intense. It’s not like learning how to trail-brake or hit an apex. You can’t really bring someone to a 16-foot rock and say, ‘Do this.’”
With bats flying, I score driving tips from Ford factory driver Vaughn Gittin Jr. The drift champion turned 4×4 man finishes sixth in the main event in a tube-frame, Bronco-esque monster whose front portal axle and nitrogen jounce bumpers alone cost about $20,000. Gittin also led Ford’s impressive podium sweep the previous day in a production-based class, driving a new Bronco with a mostly stock chassis and modest 35-inch tires. Credit where due: In part, the Bronco and Raptor earned off-road credibility (and thus popularity) via Ford’s gung-ho involvement in relatively obscure Ultra4, virtually alone among automakers. That includes Ford’s road-sensing Live Valve technology on Fox shocks, with ongoing input from drivers and teams at Hammers.
Between darkness and dust, “you’re going to be blind at some point, so you try to read trees or brush, any reference you can get,” Gittin says. “And you don’t want to drift much, because if you go sideways, you’ll hit a tire sidewall.”
And going through the rocks at night is miserable. “You can’t see your lines; it’s getting cold,” he says. “It’s much scarier.”
Thousands of RVs and campers make up the impromptu Hammertown, arranged on agrid with little over-arching logic.
Courtesy of The King Of Hammers
A co-driver with notes and GPS helps, as does great lighting. But right now, Gittin’s stadium-power LED bar dazzles the airborne schmutz and makes things worse.
It’s so dusty that when I hop into my Bronco and head to Chocolate Thunder, we get lost in surreal fog. I crawl through Hammertown, which is starting to resemble a scene from Mad Max. Hitting a dead end of RVs, I practically run over a group of young men tending an aggressively tall fire. One gestures to me to roll down my window.
“Are you maybe in the wrong camp?” he asks sternly, eyeing the Bronco.
“Yes,” I reply with emphasis, drawing a chuckle. No worries: Matt, our suddenly cheery host, points through wildfire-level haze to guide us to Chocolate Thunder. Apparently worried about dehydrated old dudes, Matt passes us Bud Light and water and urges us to pin their camp location and check out the punk and metal bands on the nighttime stage.
We’re soon atop Chocolate Thunder, enjoying those sweet, rocky-road amateur assaults. But the madness isn’t over. A morning text from Ash- worth informs me that a decommissioned Black Hawk helicopter is plucking the poor MWAK entry from Jackhammer, where it spent a lonely night. No reports on spooning.
Keyword: Darkness Makes High-Desert Off-Roading Even More Treacherous