Carolina Crawlin'

	Rock Crawling Championship Eastern Pro Nationals
	June 9 - 11, 2006 Spartanburg, South Carolina

Carolina Crawlin is the first professional rock crawling facility built in the southeast. On a base of solid materials, the course was built with blown concrete, giving incredible traction on the many steep and near-vertical surfaces.

Each team consists of one competition vehicle, one driver and one spotter. The driver operates the vehicle while the spotter is outside the vehicle and gives directions on where to drive (and not drive) to get through the course. The competition is not a race! Technical driving is the name of the game as the driver steers the vehicle through the course under the direction of the spotter. Team work is vital as the two team members guide their vehicle through the near-impossible obstacle course.

The competition usually lasts two days with each team running 4 - 5 courses per day. It's highly competitive and if you're running near the lead, every point counts, yet it's also vitally important to save the vehicle for the next course.

The judges' task is to monitor the movement of the vehicle. Penalty points are given for backing up, hitting cones, winching, going out of bounds, exceeding time limit, etc. Bonus points are earned for progressing through the course and finishing optional challenges. Penalty points are positive numbers while bonus points are negative numbers, so the lower your score, the better. Finishing with a negative score is awesome and might just win you the championship.

Total points on any course driven can be as high as 40, while 50 points are assigned if a course is not attempted.

Penalty Points examples:

1 point, Backing up or changing of direction
10 points, touch a course marker (cone, banner, etc.) by the team, including spotter or equipment
40 points, timing out (time limit for all W.E. ROCK courses is 10 minutes)
5 points, use of rear steering (given per course if used)
30 points, use of winch to aid forward progress

Bonus Points examples:

-1 point, for each set of cones completed, also called Progrssion Points
-5 points, for not using a spotter strap
-10 points, completing a bonus line (blue cones)

Vehicle Classes

Competitors are divided into three vehicle classes. The vehicles are specifically built to qualify and compete in a certain class.

The Modified Stock Class contains some impressive rigs that still look like street vehicles.

The Limited Class has fabricated trucks and buggies that must stay within certain design and construction limits.

The Unlimited Class pushes the state of the art technology in vehicle design and is composed of fabricated-from-the-ground up vehicles.

Photobooks

These photobooks only show the final "shoot-out" between the top 6 teams in the Unlimited Class at the end of the last day:

Place	Team #	Driver	Spotter
1	416	Marty Hart	Jeff Jones
?	215	Randy Torbett	Eric Nixon
?	199	Jesse Haines
?	27	Brad Styles
?	004	Matt Deas
?	145	Jason Panozzo

Links:

Event coverage from August 13-14, 2005, Spartanburg, South Carolina

Event coverage from November 12 - 13, 2005, Spartanburg, South Carolina

Carolina Crawlin' - www.carolinacrawlin.com

W.E.Rock - www.we-rock.cc

W.E.Rock rulebook - click here.