If you guys missed the recap of our first day at the Dayton WeRock rock crawling competition, you can check it out here. Otherwise, I’ll get right into what went down on Saturday.

We were 16 points out of 3rd when we started Saturday and we knew if we wanted to have a strong finish, we had to stay focused on running a smart race without thoughts of our competitors psyching us out.

C1 Course

We were the second team to tackle the first course of the day. This was exactly the same course as the one we ran on Friday, but driven in the opposite direction. We drove over a short section of rocks before heading up a small hill so we could line up the Jeep for the first set of cones, which gave us no problem. The second gate was a different story. There was one cone in particular we worried about hitting as we took on the side hill climb, so my spotter, Aaron, stacked a bunch of rocks to keep us from sliding. It was a great idea in theory, but unfortunately it didn’t work too well in practice – we hit the cone anyway. So we shrugged it off and moved onto the final gate, which was situated at the peak of a 4-foot rock. My plan was to gas it up so that we wouldn’t end up high centered on the rock. Unfortunately, we got stuck on the skid plate and it caused us to hit another cone – what a disappointment! But we made our way through the finish gate anyway with more than enough time leftover. Final score on C1 was 12.

C2 Course

This was definitely our best course the entire weekend. Right off the bat we had to make a decision: should we go for the 10 point bonus by climbing a rock face or just go around it for a 1 point progression? We decided to go for the bonus! We were equipped with some amazing Pro Comp Xtreme Mud Terrain tires on our Jeep that got us up and over no problem! The corresponding drop off was a little nerve-wracking but, after I brought in my rear WARN winch so the suspension wouldn’t unload, we made it down safely. Then I turned it right around and began rock climbing up the same rock face to head for the final 2 gates. The third gate passed by uneventfully, but the final gate showed me something I’d never seen before. Aaron was able to move the largest rock I have ever seen him lift completely out of my way – what a trooper! It cleared my path to sail through the last gate. Final score on C2 was -8.

C3 Course

We had to take a pause here while we waited for a thunderstorm to pass. 2 hours later, we got our chance at the C3 course. We knew that this was going to be a difficult one after the 2 rigs that went before us couldn’t even make it through the first gate. We started out fine, making it up the 4-foot rock face easily thanks again to my skinny pedal. We made it down to the bottom through the first gate, and this is where things took a turn for the worse. The previous drivers had torn this section up completely trying to make it through. We gave it our best, but that was where we ended the race. Final score on C3 was 39.

C4 Course

This was the final course of this weekend’s rock crawling competition. First, we drove over a rocky section to get to the first gate – not too difficult. The 2nd gate, however, was in a tricky spot. Surmounting the initial boulder wasn’t a problem, but once you got over it you were on course to run straight into another boulder. We tried to get over both of the rocks for quite some time before we gave up and decided to try another route. We ended up going completely around both of the rocks, which meant we had to knock over a cone to move forward. We were happy to make that sacrifice since we were already farther than anyone else had gotten. Unfortunately, when we lined ourselves up for the final hill climb we found that the rain had made it impossible. Final score on C4 was 38.

With all the rock climbing finished, we thought we had a solid third place finish. But when we made it to the scoring trailer, it turned out we had tied with one of the other teams. At WeRock rock climbing competitions, they determine the winner of a tie based on the score they received from the first course they ran. That was an 18 for us and a -9 for them, so they slid into 3rd and we finished 4th – bummer.

In the overall WeRock series, we’re now tied for third. Watch out for my recap of the next event, which is taking place July 24-25, 2010 in Hannibal, Missouri.

View the entire photo gallery at 4wd.com!

WeRock Dayton, TN Part 2.2