Las Cruces Chile Challenge

Chile Challenge 2007
Las Cruces, New Mexico

Tony Pellegrino, Corkey and I attended the Las Cruces Four Wheel Drive event held on 21-24 February. Cork and I left home on the Sunday before the event and headed to Quartzsite, Arizona. We had been there in the past, but had not been there during the big event in January/February when 100,000 or so RVs show up to go through all of the flea marts and so forth set up. The timing for the Chile Challenge put us there at the end the Quartzsite experience, but that was ok. We spent Sunday evening going through what was still open and then visited again Monday morning. We had a bit of rain Monday morning, which made it fun.

We had lunch and headed out. We wanted to get to Tucson and spend the night there. The plan was to meet up with Tony for the remainder of the drive. We had more rain. Just does not pay to wash your motorhome and Jeep before a trip! Before getting into Tucson I gave Tony a call. He was just leaving Simi! For the second time! He had just bought a used trailer and was having tires put on at Keith’s, but turned out the spindles were bad. Tony had to hook up with James and borrow his trailer. Tony’s plan was to stop at a Desert Rat shop in Phoenix to drop off some product, so he got there about 3AM and spent the night in their parking lot until opening. We spent the night in the parking lot of the Desert Diamond Casino off the I-19, just south of town. This is an Indian casino that allows RVers to spend the night in their parking lot. They have two casinos off the I-19. The second one is the one we stayed at and is the newest. I would suggest this place to anyone traveling. The casino was nice.

Desert Diamond Casino and Parking Lot full of RVs

The next morning the first thing we needed to do was to get fuel. The tank was empty. Well, it was too empty before we found diesel. We ran out at a stop sign! Cork got to act as a traffic cop, directing folk around the rig. The first guy who stopped behind me was nice enough to take me to an auto parts store to buy two 5 gal jugs and took me to a station to get diesel. Nice guy, to say the least.

We are finally ready to hit the road. Called Tony on the cell and he was about an hour out of Tucson, so we assumed he would hook up with us before Las Cruces. We pulled into the Las Cruces Fairgrounds, where the event was staged and Tony got there a few minutes later. We signed up and parked the motor homes. We set up the Gen-Right display in the parking lot. Got a beer and talked to a few people and then put it all away and got ready for a trail run the next morning.

Tony and Wohlers’ rigs in the camping area

Got up Wednesday AM and it was cold, but clear. We got in line around 8:30 to run Tabasco Twister. This is a hard rated trail. Tony had along a passenger. His name was Vic and he was the person responsible for the vendors. Vic was a great guy and helped us all week.

A few words about the trails here. They are rated by the Chile Pepper hotness scale of 1-10. So, the really Extreme trails are named Habanero Falls and Patzcuaro’s Revenge and a Hard trail is named Cayenne Crawler and a Moderate trail is Hopping Jalapeno. Fun.

This trail has about three large ledges that make it a Hard trail. Part way into the trail I was having trouble with my Jeep running. It was acting like it was not getting fuel. I ended up replacing the fuel pump. It started and ran ok. Stopped to watch some of the activity on the first obstacle, but it would not restart. Long story short, we got it running and headed back to town to have it looked at by the Jeep dealer. Vic had called ahead to make sure they would take us. They had a bay open waiting for us to show up. Pretty neat! The problem turned out to be the Throttle Position Sensor. The sensor was stuck in a position that said it was 94% open, which the computer read as being flooded and turned off the fuel pump. The dealer replaced the TPS and we headed back to the Fairgrounds. So, we did not get to do any of the hard stuff on that trail. We can look forward to Tabasco Twister next time.

One rig on the first fall of Tabasco Twister and Tony starting to climb, before I had to ask him to help me to get off the trail. Sorry Tony.

On Thursday we ran a trail called Sandia Gulch. This is a Hard rated trail. We had 19 vehicles on this run. The previous day we had 12. Before the run even started, Tony and I had noticed a pretty sketchy rig in line. It had a welded thingy with funny angles for the drag link. Wow. Anyway, this guy ended up ramming a rock and breaking off the tie rod end of that weird drag link. Turned out the guy was a welder, but not a designer, for sure! They spent quite a while getting the rod end put back together and bailing wired it in place. Yep, bailing wire. Would be interesting to see them get out. But wait. There’s more. It would not start. Opened the hood and the coil was smoking! Decided to disconnect the coil and pull the rig off the trail. The guy ended up riding passenger with Tony for the rest of the trail. Some friends met him at the trail end to take him home to get parts. Saw him the next day and he said it took til 5AM to get off the trail. He had made a new drag link with rod ends and bought a new coil.

Once we got going again, the trail turned into some fun. Got to go up some waterfalls, big rocks and generally had a good time. At the end of the trail was an optional climb that about half the rigs tried and most made. Tony and I did just fine.

Ledge at the end of Sandia Gulch

The wind was blowing pretty hard by the time we got back to camp. Good thing we had gotten to move inside. Much nicer. We spent a bit of time talking to people and looking at the other displays. It was very nice to me to have people come up to Tony and say how they like his products. A couple of guys had said how unusual it was for a product to fit just like it should and not need any creative fitting. There were also guys who owned shops that looked at some of the products and stated how nice they looked. In particular, the builders really liked the brackets Tony sells for the rear links. They are really nice. These guys see the advantage in buying an already assembled and scienced out piece of art to use in the build.

Friday was the vendor run. We had about a dozen rigs on this run and were supposed to run parts of various trails to fit in between some of the scheduled runs. One of the rigs was this pretty wild thing. Big, big tires. He actually cut the tires to provide some give.

Rig from Off Angle Off Road in front of my Jeep for tire size comparison

The trails we were on were Amatista Ledges and Hopping Jalapeno. Cork did not enjoy some of the off camber areas. Seemed like we were close to 45 degrees at times and there were concerns about tipping over. No issues, but some concerns. There were some fun places on this run. We got to go over some big rocks. There was one rock area that had a hole with water in it that they called The Bath Tub. You climbed a little ledge and then had to straddle it. No one had any problems on this run, but apparently if you are not paying attention to your spotter, you can fall in. One of the people on this run was a photographer from the local paper. He was in a Ranger (like a Rhino) and took most of the by-passes. But even some of the by-passes were pretty good. To get out of the last canyon was a reasonably long, loose hill. We were worried that he would have problems, but with some good driving on his part, he made it. You sure get concerned with a short and narrow rig like that on a loose hill. Don’t want to get too sideways and come on down.

Friday night was a bar-b-que dinner. The line had to go right in front of the Gen-Right display. We really were busy talking to guys in line. I am sure Gen-Right will get quite a bit of business from this event. Every so often Tony would take someone out to his rig to show him the products they would be interested in. One guy from Mexico bought quite a bit of stuff, from the tank to the suspension to protection products.

Saturday we decided to not go on a scheduled run, but to go over and watch Patzcuaro’s Revenge. We drove the Jeeps up the canyon and parked near the first waterfall. WOW! What a crowd.

The crowds were huge. The picture on the left is towards the first large waterfall (not where the rig is coming up) and the second is of the overlook with all the vehicles parked

Here is the major waterfall on the left and the third waterfall on the right

You cannot believe the crowds. Lots of folk from town came out to see the carnage. There was even a Sheriff there to help move the crowd around as the vehicles moved to the fall. He was a mounted deputy and his horse was standing to the left out of the picture. The sheriff is the guy on the left side of the picture on the left side above.

The Off Angle rig that was on the vendor run with us ended up being the major casualty of the day. He was working real hard to get up the fall and ended up on his top. Most of the rigs took a winch cable for safety. The cable was loosely attached so the vehicle would not go over, but this guy did not have the safety winch attached.

Off Angle rig on its top

After watching all of this for a few hours, Tony could not control himself and got in line. We ended up having to winch more that he would have liked, but he ran the whole trail without any damage.

Saturday night was Mexican food night. Once again the line for food was right by the Gen-Right display. We talked to more folk.

After dinner was the raffle. The event was officially now over. There were no runs scheduled for Sunday. Tony got up and was on the road by around 7:30 Sunday morning. He wanted to get home Monday afternoon. We took off around 9AM to continue on our adventure.

The Chile Challenge was a great event. The rigs here are really built for climbing tall walls. Seems the average size tire is 42 inch and they go up in the 50s for some. Lots of folk from Texas and Arizona, as you would expect. We were on a run with some folks from Wisconsin. Met one couple from Pennsylvania. Talked to people about runs in other parts of the country. Sounds like the events in Clayton, Oklahoma will be on Tony’s list. We will post a lot of pictures to go through. Enjoy them.