The Hammers

We had a blast. On the drive down it rained the entire time, except when it snowed. We spent Saturday night in Redding at our friends Laura and Jeff's place. Sunday morning we took it easy. Laura gave the guys mohawks. My head was already buzzed. We'd planned on waiting for the rest of the group coming down from Washington, but they were running a little behind, and it seemed like a better idea to go ahead and get on the road.

We got away a little before lunchtime Sunday and drove all day and night to arrive at Means Dry Lake around 3:30am Monday morning. It was freezing and the wind was fierce. We parked the tow rigs to block some of the wind and built a campfire. It burned hot and fast but didn't do much good, so we called it quits and got some sleep.




The Washington/BC group stopped in Barstow Sunday night and didn't arrive at camp until late Monday morning. After a bit of meet'n'greet we went on the first trail run, up Sledgehammer. When we got back to camp most of the remainder of our group had arrived, so we decided to go run the same trail again.



Most of Tuesday was spent fixing breakages from Monday and setting up the camo net to try to stay out of the beating-down sun. We ran Back Door late in the day and Crash got a little vertical in his Toyota. He rolled it backwards while pirouetting 270 degrees, but luckily a fender was the only casualty.

That night Jake mixed up some grapefruit juice and vodka, which earned the name "The Pink Death."



That night I walked out into the scrub to answer the call of nature, and managed to pick a bush with a Mojave Desert Sidewinder rattlesnake in it. He made a lot of noise but nothing worse.



Wednesday Berne, Jake and I went into town for 80 pounds of ice and a bag of sour cream and onion potato chips. We got back to camp and everybody ran Wrecking Ball.

Thursday, the heat started messing with our heads, so Berne wired a spare electric radiator fan to a 12v emergency battery charger and Hugh stabbed holes in a water bottle and hung it in behind the fan to make a mister. It worked relatively well, too.



Later, we ran Claw Hammer and had a hell of a good time singing Paint it Black and White Rabbit at the tops of our lungs after giving up on the skipping dusty cd player.





Friday we ran Outer Limits, which is a good 45 minute drive from camp through the desert. We ran into a lot of traffic on the trail. Between breakages and tough obstacles, our group got mixed up with a couple others and it took forever to get everyone up the trail. It was slow going but we met some cool people and got everybody repaired and out of there eventually.



Team Fat Shit decided to leave Saturday and make the drive home a little easier. We also took a route home through Nevada instead of the way we came down through California. So we headed through Joshua Tree and Twentynine Palms, into Nevada and up through Las Vegas, and made it to Hawthorne around dark. We spent the night there goofing off in a casino (right across the street from Ed's Bait and Tackle and 24 hour bail bonds). Eating a real meal and sleeping in a real bed was pretty nice.



Sunday we continued up through Nevada and into southeastern Oregon. Holy crap there ain't nobody in southeastern Oregon. I look forward to spending time out there, checking out places like Hole-in-the-Ground, Malheur Cave, and the Steens Mountain area.






We got home around 11pm Sunday night.

The Hammers are pretty impressive. The trails are pretty gnarly and not too long, and there are some dunes in the area and lots of potential for desert racing. I shot a ton of pictures and a couple hours of video. I need a video capture device so I can get all that video onto the computer and start editing. The trip gave us some great ideas for future Team Fat Shit excursions. Moab in October is going to be rad.