TIERRA
DEL SOL |
A
Fond Look Back At This Great Event. |
Editor: Eric Bewley
Story/Photo: Jason Hutchison |
Coachella,
CA - Each year around the first
weekend of March the Tierra Del Sol 4x4 club of San Diego holds their
annual Desert Safari & Raffle. This year was the 44th
annual event and has grown to be a very large gathering that attracts
anything and everything that will run in the dirt.
Each year the club members of Tierra Del Sol set up a great event
to host on average 10,000 or so dirt playing enthusiasts. There is a great
aftermarket vendor arena with quite a good offering of aftermarket
products. We headed out to
this years event which takes place in the infamous Truckhaven Hills just a
bit south of Coachella.
| We rolled into the TDS
event Friday evening about 7 pm (just after dusk) and the best way
to describe it was like rolling into the Thunderdome out of a Mad
Max movie. Huge lifted vehicles, rock buggies, golf carts, dirt
bikes climbing everything in sight.
Dust, smoke, and the scream of engines filled the air, with
thousands of raging campfires, beaming off road headlights all
around you and shooting up into the clear night sky. |
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After getting camp set up,
we headed over to what appears to commonly be called the
“Cracks”. The Cracks consist of pretty much just that, 30ft deep
near vertical walled trails winding their way through soft packed
dirt created by water erosion.
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| Reminiscent of the “Dump
Bump” or “Potato Salad Hill” in Moab, thousands upon thousands
of people gather around these cracks as evening presses on to
suggest and taunt the slew of buggies, trucks, and of course
Suzuki’s to climb the vertical walls towards the on looking crowd.
This is nonstop action with plenty of carnage, wheel stands and
rollovers. |
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Saturday morning returns to a
more structured event as club members of the Tierra Del Sol lead trail runs
of all calibers though out the Truckhaven Hills. If the wagon train style
off road adventure is not your cup of tea, not to worry there is an absolute
endless supply of terrain in the Truckhaven hills that will entertain
enthusiasts for days on end. There is literally everything here, hill
climbs, super twisty canyon sections, sand washes, rock hills and much much
more.
Saturday evening is the famous
Raffle where the Tierra Del Sol club members raffle off over 50,000 dollars
in product. As you can imagine this draws quite a crowd. We
spent several days at the Desert Safari and like any event of this camber
it’s impossible to flag everyone down to get their name and general spiel
so we just took pictures of every Suzuki we saw having a great time.
If you haven’t been to Tierra Del Sol then I suggest you put it on
your calendar for next year. If you are anywhere near the south west it’s
an event not to be missed. This area is ideal for Suzuki based off road
vehicles with the plethora of tight canyons and narrow trails. We saw lots
of stock zuk guys out here having a blast too so don’t be shy when this
event comes around again next year!
Click on above for Large
Collage of event.
 ZW
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