Another King of the Hammers is in the books. The trip started out much better than the year before with no tow trucks involved. Ritam and I decided to go south through Albuquerque and Flagstaff instead of taking 70 all the way across. This made for a much more boring drive, but thats what we were hoping for.

Anna and I made minimal stops for the first part of the drive so that we could get into Flagstaff early enough for dinner. There’s a little pizza restaurant there called Pizzicleta that is definitely worth stopping for. They pretty much always have a wait from what I have seen over the years, but Mother Road Brewing right next door is the best way to kill the time. We picked up some rad merch from them this time, too. Once Ritam and Jay had nearly caught up we headed out of Flagstaff for Kingman where we all shared a hotel room for the night.

The next day we drove the last four-ish hours from Kingman to Hammertown. We got there a little after noon on Sunday and the traffic getting in really wasn’t bad at all. Almost a bummer honestly, because there’s nothing quite like driving in on Boone Rd for the first time again and seeing every kind of vehicle from dirt bikes, to sedans, to tube buggies driving past you. Its even better at night.

Ritam towed the Jeep out on a trailer, so we found a camp spot for the week and left the Jeep and trailer to go pick up the camper trailer. By the time we got back it was dark so we set up camp and headed out to Chocolate Thunder to see what was going on. Being the first night it was pretty low key, but we still got to see some carnage.

The next day we checked out Hammertown for the first time that year, got some swag and some lunch and then headed out towards remote pit 2 to check out some trails out there. We posted up at King’s Veto for a little bit watching some rec wheelers going through. They were from all over from Tennessee all the way to Washington and were a fun group to chat with. I learned that day that there is such a placer as Big Bottom, Tennessee.

Sherpa Motorsports, a race team out of Colorado, was having an open pit night that night, so we stopped by to have a beer and chat with them and others that showed up. This was actually really cool, and I kinda wish more teams did stuff like this. Anna and I grabbed some burritos from Cowboy Tacoz that night, of course they were delicious.

Tuesday, Ritam and I had decided, was the day we were going to try Turkey Claw. We walked the trail first to pick our lines and see if we actually had any chance of making it through. After some hyping each other up, we had built up the never to give it a shot. It went pretty smooth through the first section, but I did get turtle’d once and had to winch to Ritam who was in front of me. This was just a consequence of a bad line choice. We pulled up to the pinch rock section to let a couple vehicles by before working Ritam through it. Overall, Ritam did great getting through it. He had to backup and readjust a couple times but got up without having to pull line. He pulled off to the side so that I could go through now.