Balducci, all crossed up during the Class 3 Shootout. He runs an '89 Geo Tracker with Toyota axles.

Yeungling on tap at local bars, columns of steam rising from the valleys you pass, “Praise Jesus!!” on every other radio station and the smell of burning coal in the air—it must be Eastern Pennsylvania, and more specifically the Rausch Creek Off-Road Park. As the premier 4x4 park in the Northeastern U.S., Rausch Creek has been host to a number of big-time events in recent months, including the East Coast qualifying event for the 2010 King of the Hammers, and it will host its own, long-format, off-road racing series beginning this fall.

Beginning in ‘08 Rausch Creek began running its own rock-crawling series dubbed “RCrocs.”  With affordable entry fees and a simplified vehicle class system, RCrocs is targeted at both weekend warriors who just want to see how their skills and their stock Jeep stack up against similar vehicles, and those more professional tube-buggie drivers who want to refine their technique in working toward a series like W.E. Rock.

Bruce Shallis, a driving force behind the RCrocs series and Rausch Creek in general, seems happy with the number of competitors that have been showing up for each of this year’s events (53 for this competition).

“Given the overall economy, the fact that we are anywhere close to our all-time high for entries (around 65) is really surprising,” Shallis said. “The number of spectators coming for each event has been okay too. Really, as long as enough show up that we can break even in putting these events on, we will keep doing it.”

The format for RCrocs is very easy to follow. There are 12 distinct courses laid out over a series of mostly manmade (sprayed concrete) obstacles that are divided into three courses per each of the four classes of vehicles (determined by tire size, number of locking differentials, etc.).  Each team, which includes a driver and spotter, will attempt to complete all three of the courses within their class while accumulating as few penalty points (given out for things like reversing the vehicle and touching a cone marker) as possible within the given 10-minute time period. The top six crawlers in each class qualify for the “shootout”—a final run over a single course (including more challenging bonus lines) to determine the penultimate winners.

Team #089, Don Willard, runs a clean-looking 'Zuk that negotiated the large rocks during morning qualifying well.

Arriving mid morning on the Saturday of the races, the weather was overcast, hot and humid. The past few days had seen sporadic rain showers, which partially filled many of the small bowls that make up the crawling courses. Rain on this day, however, would hold off until the very end of the event, keeping the majority of the courses dry and tacky enough for some great off-camber climbs.

Heading over to the registration trailer to grab my media vest and sign my life away, I was surprised to see that the parking lot was relatively full and that there were already several hundred spectators milling about waiting for the action to begin. A good number of vendors were also present, giving the fans some food to eat, Jeep upgrades to buy and videos to watch.  Additionally, there was a R/C rock-crawling competition for those without a full-sized 4x4 with which to challenge the rocks. In other words, the RCrocs event had all the amenities and atmosphere of any big-time off-road event you can think of, just on a smaller, less-expensive scale.

 

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Unknown competitor charging the course.

What was not on a smaller scale was the action taking place all around the spectators. A rough dirt path about 20 yards wide ran down the middle of the competition area, with six of the tightly spaced crawling courses on each side. Were one, as many did, to walk to the middle (lengthwise) of this path you could witness crawling action in every direction you turned, with the sounds of revving engines – metal crunching on rock and tires to squealing to gain purchase – filling your ears.

Dominating nearly all these courses was the ubiquitous Jeep Wrangler. Though a few XJs, a TTB Ford Explorer, a Samurai, and a Bronco do make themselves known by their appearance on this day where Class 4 is filled with tube buggies, these are the exceptions to the belief that the Wrangler is the most capable off-road vehicle ever built.

Team #016 Karl Knack being observed by a RCrocs judge during the morning runs.

The initial round of competition weeded out the haves from the have nots, as there were numerous roll-overs from competitors in all classes as drivers pushed themselves and their vehicles beyond their limits, in this, the final event of the RCrocs season. The “Crane of Shame” was called out to put a number of these vehicles back on all fours if fellow competitors and teammates could not get the unfortunate entrant back on its wheels.

The constant chaos of trucks trying to overcome the forces of gravity and friction continued for about four hours before the top six in each class were finally determined. While those already eliminated began loading vehicles onto their respective trailers, those remaining regrouped and prepared for a final assault.

Team #000, Zach Vaughn, Looking very patriotic on one of   his first runs of the day.

With slightly staggered starting times for each final round, spectators had more of a chance to see the best of what each offered. As was the case during Rounds 1 and 2 of the RCrocs series, a few familiar names rose to the top.

In Class 1 it was longtime competitive crawler Kane Riccardi with his red YJ taking his third consecutive RCrocs event (ensuring his Class 1 season championship in the process) after falling behind eventual second-place winner Scott Dutter during the initial qualifying runs.

Class 2 continued the year-long flip-flopping of first- and second-place drivers Jay Hopko and Justin Williams. Coming into the event, Hopko and Williams were tied for the season championship, as each had taken a first- and second-place finish in the prior two events. Hopko and his Maxxis-shod TJ took both the morning runs and the shootout to claim the win for the day and the year, finishing a single point ahead of Williams for ’09.

 

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Unknown competitor having a rough start to the day, rolling over her street-legal Jeep.

Seeing a different winner in all three of this year’s RCrocs events was Class 3, where John Balducci grabbed the lead during qualifying and held on through the shootout to take the golden ring home in his tubed-out ’89 Geo Tracker running Toyota axles front and rear.

Unlike all the other classes, however, the winner on this day did not bring home the season championship, as Grason Brown with his YJ-grilled Jeep had built up a sufficiently large enough points lead through the first two events that a second-place finish on this day was just enough for him to grab the Class 3 season title.

The most heavily-modified class, Class 4, has been the personal playground of primarily two competitors in ’09, with Clayton Walters (co-owner and founder of Clayton Off-Road Manufacturing) taking the first two RCrocs events in ’09.

Eugene Rose taking careful directions from his spotter.

But Clayton did not take this one. Instead, it was Dean Benner and his custom “moon buggy” powered by a rear-mounted Turnkey Engine Supply Ecotec motor that crawled its way to the top. Clayton and his 4.0L Jeep-powered buggy did not go away empty handed, however, as his second-place finish behind Benner on this day meant he would go home with RCrocs’ top prize in its top class for ’09.

Once all the seriousness of the day’s competition was over, everyone’s attention turned to an exercise in pure fun. Open to all comers who could put up $20 and was willing to thrash their vehicle and shred its tires, a contest ensued to see if anybody could overcome a single obstacle dubbed “The Hands Climb.”

So named for the dried handprints located directly in the middle of a 20-foot, vertical concrete wall, “The Hands Climb” has only been conquered once by rock crawling legend Shannon Campbell after this year’s W.E. Rock event, requiring a spotter’s strap to complete it. All attempts on this day would be done without the aid of a strap, and no one would make it, though numerous drivers made valiant runs at it. “The Hands Climb,” its pooled monetary reward, and the glory that comes with being the first non-strapped driver to conquer this monster will have to wait for another day.

Alan Shortridge was one of the "Pros" at the event in his moonbuggy.

As today’s RCrocs announcer Mike “Rooster” Burns wraps things up in his perfect-for-radio voice, the band that has been hired to provide entertainment began to play and some chicken wings were about to be served to all who were left standing after what was a long and immensely entertaining day of intense competition.

To paraphrase the powers that be at Rausch Creek when they started the RCrocs series back in ’08, “The rumors of the demise of rockcrawling in the Northeast have been greatly exaggerated.” With solid management in place, an annual W.E. Rock event, a KOH qualifying event in the books, two successful years of the grassroots RCrocs crawling series and an upcoming off-road racing series beginning this September, Rausch Creek is becoming a field of dreams for many enthusiasts, and it’s proving the “if you build it, they will come” adage truer than ever.