First, some defintions: If someone invites you to go rock crawling, you're likely joining a caravan of off-road machines (whether it's a Jeep Wranger or even a Ford Crown Victoria) traversing the most treacherous terrain available, at slow but careful speeds. If someone invites you to go rock bouncing, you're being asked to strap into a 500-hp piece of tube steel with no bodywork and a massive suspension that will be hurtled through the wilderness at full throttle. Like this buggy above, which attempted to climb a well-known rock bluff last weekend with surprising results.
To say rock crawlers and rock bouncers have different views of the world puts it diplomatically. Traditional off-roaders see the rock bouncers as nothing but brute-force buzzsaws requiring no talent outside a heavy right foot. Bouncers, obviously, disagree, pointing to the skills needed to construct shock-proof drivetrains, high-travel suspensions and find a path that matches the power and traction; they also ask what's wrong with having some crowd-pleasing fun.
Although I'm not sure I would have stood quite as close as the crowd on Viagra Hill, a bluff well known to off-roaders near Disney, Okla., during the annual Big Meat Run. There's a baker's dozen of videos online showing previous attempts to climb the hill, most of which end with the vehicle rolled over into the water. It's not quite straight up, but it's steep enough to make most ardent drivers think twice. Not Bobby Tanner, the scion of a rock-bouncing family; his children Jordan and Shelby compete in events around the southern United States. In the video above, Tanner has a moment where he's holding his ColeWorx chassis in mid-air through sheer horsepower. Shelby Tanner took a few more attempts to get her pink-accented rig up the hill, but in rock bouncing, it's not the results so much as the effort that counts:
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