This year marks the official 20th anniversary of King of the Hammers (KoH), an off-road racing extravaganza that takes place each year in Johnson Valley, Calif. Perhaps most famous for spawning Ultra4 vehicles built for the gnarliest four-wheeling. KoH also includes high-speed desert running in trophy trucks, UTVs, and motorcycles — but rocks are always part of the equation.
Every year, the crowds get bigger and bigger, to the point that a makeshift “Hammertown” sprouts up in the desert. It’s almost akin to a Burning Man, only for off-road culture, not transcendental business bros turned Ketamine hipsters for a week. With motorhomes and toy haulers, camping and partying, attendees watch the racing, and then light up the rock crawling trails at night. Amber floods, fireworks, grilling, and boomboxes swarm on climbs known by puerile names like Chocolate Thunder and Backdoor.
Ahead of this year’s festivities, KoH invited me out for a media day to meet founder Dave Cole and his cohort. In an incredible garage home in the desert, Cole explained the event’s expanding presence. More racers, more spectators, more people, more companies, and more to clean up.
KoH takes an enormous effort, which grows every year while transforming what began as a purposefully under-the-radar race into the world’s wildest off-roading spectacle each year.
The Return of the King
I don’t use such lofty language to describe KoH lightly. I’ve chased and pre-ran the Baja 1000, spent 3+ weeks in Saudi Arabia for the Dakar Rally, and gone to Supercross and rally racing events. Personally, I’ve spent countless days and nights wheeling and camping, from the U.K. to the Middle East, and all over America.
But there’s simply nothing like an Ultra4 car, and luckily, I got to ride in one as part of the media day. My curiosity almost outweighed my excitement, though, of course, I wish I could have driven the rig myself. Driver and owner Johnny Valdez took the wheel of his 4800 Legends class build instead. He’s raced this very setup at KoH three times, and all over the United States in between.
“I’m a West Coast guy,” Valdez told me. “There’s a lot of big places back east, but King of the Hammers, Johnson Valley, this is the place to be.”
Before we went out for one of the most hardcore hot laps of my life, Valdez explained the build. His Ultra4 starts with a Bomber Fabrication chassis built by Randy Slawson. But the many classes for KoH racing come into play immediately.
“This is a single-shock car from the 4800 class,” he said. “So we’re limited to one shock per corner, 37-inch tires, has to be a straight axle, not IFS in the front. And two seats in the cab. The engine is a stroked LS3, it’s 416 cubic inch. Roughly 610 crank horsepower.”
Valdez likes the Bomber chassis for rock-crawling more than the high-speed stuff. It’s lightweight and narrow, weighing in at just 4,200 pounds. Still, instead of struggling up the worst obstacles in a race, even something this wild still needs a winch.
“No doubt, there’s times where we can sit there and play around and try to find the best line if we’re driving for fun,” Valdez said. “But in the race, sometimes we give it one or two good shots, and then if we don’t get it, we’re pulling a winch.”
Evolving the Ultra4 Cars and KoH as an Event
The whole concept of Ultra4 cars came about as rock crawlers built more specialized rigs to conquer the trails known as the “Hammers” in Johnson Valley. And really, understanding King of the Hammers requires understanding the cars themselves.
The evolution started with Toyota pickups and Jeeps built with ridiculous gear reductions, long-travel suspension, and huge tires to get up the Hammers. Not, critically, trophy trucks that prioritize higher speeds. But actually getting to the Hammers, therefore, took forever, as Dave Cole explained it.
“No one around here was driving the desert,” Cole admitted, “’cause every car we had was slow as shit. The reason why they called it Outer Limits is because it took an hour and a half to get there.… I’d have to get out and disconnect my hubs, drive out in two-wheel drive, because my drive was making too much noise. Like, the struggle was real.”
Cole and his rock-crawling friends might spend hours conquering a Hammer trail for the first time. And whoever finishes an epic attempt first then gets to name it — always scary, hence, the often epithetical nomenclature.
Now, the original “OG13” Kings who raced back in the first official event are always welcomed back. However, the event has evolved to include harder trails, multiple laps, and desert racing.
I got to ride shotgun with Valdez as he hauled through whoops at top speed, banking up on berms, and then slithering through the gnarliest rock trail of my life. Even from the passenger seat, I needed to rethink off-road driving entirely. My whole concept of a line went out the metaphorical window. Vision of the trail still matters, but wheel travel, grip, and power render even large boulders inconsequential.
And yet, the closest comparison I can make is driving a hardcore UTV. I pre-ran the Baja 1000 in a Polaris Rzr Pro R, and spent days on the Vegas to Reno racecourse hammering a Can-Am Maverick.
Think of the Ultra4 as essentially an enormous UTV. In fact, Kyle Chaney, in a highly modified Can-Am Maverick, won the 2025 KoH event in the Ultra4 4400 Unlimited Class. He won the toughest off-road desert race in a prepped UTV. That’s wild!
The Rise of Side-by-Sides & UTVs
Cole also recognizes how much the UTV phenomenon helps to explain the rise of KoH, too. “The Rzr was launched the same month and the same year as the first official King of the Hammers,” Cole remembers. “So then, by 2010, we started racing them here. We called them golf carts back then. We didn’t know how bad the rubber bands were at that point. We just thought they were little, like, just smaller than my golf cart.
“Now, if you’re in a UTV, you’re at Outer Limits in 9 minutes, and then you can go up the trail in that same UTV, probably better than that old Toyota pickup truck.”
Anyone can go out and buy a UTV and enjoy that incredible capability for pennies on the dollar versus a custom Ultra4 build. Plus, dealers will often finance a purchase. This makes KoH dreams much more attainable.
Out in Johnson Valley, I spent hours with a newcomer to the sport named Maile Hale, an 18-year-old out of Fallbrook, Calif. Hale raced a Yamaha RMax in the Sportsman UTV class in 2025.
Compared to the big LS-powered Ultra4 car, Hale’s RMax lacks any grunt, uses a CVT transmission (Cole’s “rubber band”), and seems to have the suspension travel of about a golf cart. And yet, she didn’t even hesitate to attempt Chocolate Thunder with me in the passenger seat. Then the front diff blew up, and we needed to winch downhill — a first for me.
After we got back onto the flats, I asked Hale how she got into rock-crawling and racing.
“In February of 2024, I started my journey into off-road racing when I broke my wrist on my dirt bike and my martial arts professional career ended,” she said. “The Jessi Combs Foundation has been one of my biggest supporters in racing, and they’ve really helped kick start me into this by getting me in touch with Dave and Bailey Cole through the rookie program, and covering the fees I needed. But they’ve also just the relationship with the foundation is amazing because Jesse was such a cool and awesome person that broke so many barriers for women.”
I made a face, and Hale revealed she’s won multiple state and national championships in Taekwondo, and planned to transition to professional kickboxing and MMA before the injury. Finding support through the foundation set up in honor of the “fastest woman on four wheels” then helped make the switch to off-road racing, but how did that first year at KoH go?
“Oh, we rolled down Chocolate Thunder,” Hale almost laughed, “due to a loss of power steering. We were able to get upright again and keep going until we got to around the mailbox area, then we had to call it. We weren’t able to turn the steering wheel at all. We tried winching ourselves, but we were just stuck, so we let the car sit for a little bit, because we’d gone into limp mode as well, and then we were able to drive back to camp.”
This year, Hale’s Rmax will feature a new power steering unit from Weller Racing, plus new Fox shocks — and a new front diff, after my day onboard. And any UTV will need significant upgrades to truly compete at KoH, in reality. Cole, for his part, thinks that no company has quite nailed the perfect desert vehicle yet.
“I don’t think Ford or Can-AM have either built the best off-road car in the world yet,” he explained. “There’s something still in the middle. The problem we have — and when it’s resolved, it will fundamentally change our sport — is we do not have any all-wheel-drive transfer cases that lock into four-low. So you don’t have differentiation. But you can see what rally cars can do with differentiation.”
The solution in Cole’s mind will require taking another step forward into adopting partially electric powertrains, similar to modern hybrid supercars. Ultra4 cars are essentially mid-engined supercars built for extreme off-road excursions.
“When the transfer case is figured out,” Cole admitted, “I personally want to build an ICE rear, twin motor front, almost like an I-beam but with motors on the chassis driving the far sides. And then when you turn, you can yaw the car. You can do a front burn. You can do anything you want to do… Effectively, you’ll have like a 1.25-scale or a 1.1-scale Can-Am, just a little bit bigger, the smallest Ultra4 car. But it has a completely separated all-wheel-drive sprag in the center that it can lock into four-low.”
A Race, Not a Rave
If that kind of investment sounds over the top, remember that an Ultra4 car can easily cost seven figures already. And the popularity of KoH truly boggles the mind, since Cole now runs a multimillion-dollar business organizing the event each year — so much so that cars now do live mapping to create a sim racing database, allowing anyone to upload digitally and try out Johnson Valley in a gaming platform.
But KoH isn’t only about the racing. Cole and his original crew originally wanted to save Johnson Valley as an OHV area from being transformed into a military base back in 2007. But they couldn’t officially promote the racing, or they’d need a BLM permit. The rise of internet forums helped, and now 80,000-100,000 people will show up across 2½ weeks total. That includes 150 to 200 motorcycle racers and approximately 300 racecars.
As the event blew up, everyone needed to leave no trace to prevent the Bureau of Land Management from shutting down Hammertown. That means setting a good example by picking up trash before, during, and after the racing. In fact, this year, Cole is initiating a program where he will give out a free KoH ticket to anyone who brings him a bag of trash they picked up in the desert — with no limits, and transferable for resale.
Of course, there will still be bad apples in the crowds, and the nighttime mayhem proliferating on social media doesn’t help KoH’s image. Cole says, “It’s a race, not a rave — or at least, we can have a rave, but don’t be an asshole.”
“You ever heard of that adage, good roads bring bad people and bad roads bring good people?” Cole asked me rhetorically. “The farther you get away from asphalt, the better the person you end up meeting 99 times out of 100. And it’s not because it has nothing to do with anything. It’s just that whatever in you brought you to drive that car here is an inherent personality trait that makes you fucking rad to hang out with, doesn’t matter if it’s here or at a bar in England.”
Personal Taste
In previous years, I’ve watched the chaos at Chocolate Thunder during King of the Hammers for hours, enjoying a beverage or two as the wind whips up the canyon, music blasting, and rock-crawlers roaring, fireworks outshining the starscape. Personally, I prefer off-roading with less risk of breaking my vehicles.
And I want to get away from the crowd, as far from the asphalt as possible, as Cole himself might say. Not to hang out with a hundred of thousands of racing fans. But I do so on BLM land across the Southwest, land that events like KoH and figures like Cole can help to keep in the public domain.
The entire community needs to fight that battle together, not just each tiny niche among four-wheelers, rock-crawlers, overlanders, or adventure riders alike.
KoH 2026
Hammertown will be in full effect during KoH 2026, from January 22 to February 7. With eight races on the schedule and 770 teams racing, there is plenty of action to tune in to, whether live in Johnson Valley or on your couch via the live stream.
