Four times a year, these multiday United Rockcrawling and Off-Road Challenges turn the small town of Jellico (two hours from Tellico) into the center of the universe for 100 crawlers and 9,900 spectators who’ve driven hundreds of miles to watch a sport that combines an elegant downhill slalom with the Demolition Derby. Teams consist of a driver and a spotter, whose job is to guide the driver through a course defined by orange traffic cones. Just nudging one means 10 penalty points. The pair with the fewest points wins.
For the fans, part of the allure is that they can be close to the course, making the experience much more intimate than arena racing. “NASCAR has become so big and commercial,” says Brian Waldrop, who drove from Marietta, S.C., to watch the spectacle. And for those wary of the beer-guzzling crowds at other sporting events, rock crawling is alcohol-free. The prohibition started in the sport’s early days, when drivers would knock back a few while behind the wheel, making an already risky endeavor look really scary. UROC officials decided to ban drinking, even among the fans, who were doing their own share of imbibing and flinging of beer bottles.
The sport has grown mostly by word of mouth, or as Tennessean Gary Welch puts it: “One redneck said to another redneck, ‘Hey, I can do that better than you’.” Just three years ago, contests drew only a few hundred fans and 30 crawlers. Now teams in new clubs like Jordan’s Rock Runner Racing help each other at events with sponsorship from companies like BFGoodrich. But it’s still man against mountain. The night before the most recent Jellico contest, Jordan–who works as an asphalt paver–was up late meticulously cutting tread from his tires so the mud would spit out with ease. Crawlers need that passion. Ninety percent of the $50,000 it cost to build Jordan’s rig came out of his own pocket; the most he can win at an event is $7,000.
The best crawlers thrive on the danger. Jordan has endured a broken nose and two concussions, and has had a few teeth knocked out. During an event last year his rig dangled off a 15-foot overhang. “We just slowed everything down, backtracked and got out of it,” he says. In the most recent match, he and his spotter, Jerry Watson, came in fifth after a rough second half filled with a rollover and two cone penalties. “It was just a dumb thing,” he says. Since they’re still first in the series, they’re looking to bigger and better things like the SuperCrawl (the Super Bowl of rock crawling), which will be on ESPN2 in the fall. Real crawlers always get back up.
