The Ultimate Desert Race: KOH 2016

The annual King Of The Hammers event held in Johnson Valley, CA has to be our favorite event that we get to attend. Johnson Valley OHV area is one of our favorite wheeling spots nearly year round because it is only an hour and a half drive from our shop in Redlands. Unlike our typical weekend trip, where we may only have to share the 140,000 acre OHV area with a half dozen people, KOH week turns the lakebed into a small city, aptly known as Hammertown USA. The temporary city even gets its own zip code for the week.

Although the event is a week long, the main attraction is the Ultra4 race, which is the first Friday of every February. For the big race we typically watch from our favorite spectactor spot at the top of the canyon known as Wrecking Ball. A course change this year had competitors going down the trail, so we decided to take a little hike to some more remote spectating locations. We started the day at the Hell's Gate trail, and after seeing that most of the trail had a bypass, we continued on to Devil's Slide. The slide provided slightly better action, but was still a downhill section, and what we were looking for was an uphill technical section with big rocks, so we made our way to the Sunbonnet trail, and it delivered. We largely had the trail to ourselves,aside from a few course workers at the very top. Save yourself the trouble of the 4 mile hike and take a look at our photos and video compilation of all the action.