2026 King of the Hammers, 20th Anniversary

This year I was lucky enough to attend the 20th Anniversary King of the Hammers.

20 years of KoTH

For those who don’t know what KoTH is; One week each year the silent expanse of Johnson Valley erupts into something that feels less like a race and more like a mechanical fever dream out of Mad Max. Part desert apocalypse, part renegade carnival. King of the Hammers transforms the dust into “Hammertown,” a fully functioning pop-up city of welders, whiskey, and war rigs that rises from nothing and vanishes just as quickly, like Burning Man but with torque specs and roll cages. What began as a brutal test of man and machine now anchors the broader Ultra4 Racing championship, but the spectacle spills far beyond a single series—multiple classes and sanctioning bodies stake their claim on the rocks, all while the surrounding desert becomes an unsanctioned playground of high-horsepower chaos. By day, the hammers echo with competition; by night, bonfires flicker against the silhouettes of tube-frame monsters, and the line between professional motorsport and wild-eyed recreation blurs into a haze of dust and adrenaline.

Hammertown USA

King of the Hammers started as a bar napkin dream cooked up by rock-crawler Dave Cole and desert racer Jeff Knoll at a Chili's in San Bernardino. In 2007, they invited twelve unsuspecting guys out to Johnson Valley, told them nothing, and just let chaos happen — no spectators, no vendors, just raw desert brutality across 35 miles of rock-crawling gauntlet with names like Devil's Slide, Hell's Gate, and Wrecking Ball. JR Reynolds won in a blistering 2:57 while some poor souls were still out there five hours later using GPS to pray their way through unmarked trails. After the dust settled, a $100 bet on a forum spiraled into a full-blown phenomenon — the OG13 (actually 12, but a T-shirt printer screwed up and it stuck), Hammerking Productions, sponsors, 35,000 screaming spectators, and a race so savage that in 2013 only 27 of 129 competitors even finished within the 15-hour limit. No chase vehicles, no mercy; you break something, you fix it yourself in the desert or you die trying. As Jeff Knoll put it best: out there, running out of talent might just mean death.

Out in the hills

My week at King of the Hammers didn’t begin with the green flag—it started with a long haul south, a trailer-mounted Polaris RZR bouncing behind us and the Californian Mountains wearing a fresh coat of snow in the distance. The miles slipped by in that familiar pre-race haze of anticipation, and by the time we rolled into camp, a cold beer by the fire felt less like a luxury and more like a ritual. Hammertown was already alive—generators thumping, welders sparking, the desert air thick with fuel and dust.

RZR in tow

Snow capped peaks

Meathead

Hanging out

The next morning, we joined a full caravan of UTVs and pointed them toward the rocks. What followed was pure desert theater: near-vertical climbs that felt like they’d tip you onto the spare tire, tight canyon cuts with barely a mirror’s width to spare, and long sandy stretches where the speedo swept past 75 mph without apology. It’s that contrast—precision crawling one minute, flat-out desert running the next—that defines the place.

Hanging by the Joshua Tree

Derek and his rig

Dust on the horizon

Dust as the sun goes down

After dark we drifted toward Chocolate Thunder, where the line between competition and spectacle dissolves entirely. Tube-chassis monsters and wildly modified trucks took turns assaulting the rocks while spectators lined the ledges—coolers cracked open, bonfires snapping, allegedly there were even fireworks. It’s equal parts motorsport and block party, and when the engines finally fall silent, the adrenaline doesn’t.

The 40 - Bar in Hammertown

Spectating

Chocolate Thunder

Rock Crawling

Fireworks, allegedly

The following day traded rock for sand as we posted up in the dunes to watch rigs send it skyward, suspension at full droop against a desert backdrop that looks tailor-made for slow-motion replays. If the photos don’t quite capture the scale of it, that’s probably because King of the Hammers isn’t just an event—it’s an atmosphere.

Gotta love a Kei Truck

Nice air

It gets wild

Widebody

Field repairs

There’s plenty more photos on my Instagram.

While spending some free time hanging out, my “Overhead Manager” nerd tendencies kicked in and I found radio frequencies in use in the area. This might be a useful resource in the future as it taps into comms from the event organizers, search and rescue, and others. If you’ve got a Uniden Bearcat SR30C or similar scanner, you can program these into a single search band easily.

Click to reveal radio frequencies

Frequency	Category	Description	Alpha Tag	License
150.86	KotH	FAIR	FAIR	WPGK938
151.49	KotH	BITD	BITD	WRCL361
151.505	KotH	CHECKERS2	CHECKERS2	WRAP613
151.5125	Ultra4 Racing	Logistics	U4-2	WRAP613
151.625	District 37	District 37 Channel 1 / KotH WEATHERMAN	Dist37 D1	WRAP613
151.685	KotH	NETWORK	NETWORK	WPGK938
151.7	Ultra4 Racing	Race Ops	U4-1	WRAP613
151.715	KotH	BFGRLY	BFGRLY	WPGK938
151.775	KotH	LOCOMOCO	LOCOMOCO	WPGK938
151.925	KotH / S&R	CHECKERS1 / Rescue3 Channel 5		WPGK938
152.51	KotH	SANDLIMO	SANDLIMO
152.96	KotH	RGDRLY	RGDRLY	WPGK938
152.975	KotH	ULTRA2	ULTRA2	WPGK938
153.095	KotH	ULTRA1	ULTRA1	WPGK938
153.11	KotH	YOKOHA	YOKOHA	WPGK938
153.23	Ultra4 Racing	Production	U4-3	WRAP613
153.245	KotH	CORE	CORE	WPGK938
153.295	KotH	BFGPITS	BFGPITS	WQSX713
153.38	KotH	MAG7	MAG7	WPGK938
153.4	Search and Rescue	Channel 4	Rescue3 Ch4
153.83	Fire-Tac	Countywide Tactical	BDC V15	KA7008
154.515	KotH / S&R	PCIRLY / Rescue3 Channel 3	PCIRLY	WPGK938
154.57	District 37	Channel 3	Dist37 D3
154.6	District 37	Channel 2	Dist37 D2
154.98	KotH	BAJAPITS	BAJAPITS
155.16	KotH	RESCUE	RESCUE	WPYV458
155.175	Search and Rescue	Channel 2	Rescue3 Ch2
155.295	Search and Rescue	Channel 1	Rescue3 Ch1
156.075	Air to Ground medical helicopter	California On-Scene Emergency Coordination System (simplex on-scene multi-agency interop)	CALCORD	KB82490
156.675	KotH	PRIVATE	PRIVATE
157.45	KotH	KOH	KOH
158.4	Ultra4 Racing	Fire/EMS Tac	FTAC-2	WRAP613
158.4075	Ultra4 Racing	Fire/EMS Tac	U4-MED	WRAP613
166.375	BLM	Admin Net / Fire Temporary	BLM CDD Admin	KMC457
166.4875	BLM	Fire Net / Overhead Ops	BLM CDD Fire
166.75	BLM	Law Net	BLM CDD Law
168.35	BLM	Monitor Tac 1	BLM CDD Mon T1
168.6	BLM	Monitor Tac 2	BLM CDD Mon T2
168.7	BLM	King of the Hammers Fire/EMS	KOH Fire
169.7125	BLM	Imperial Sand Dunes - Rangers	ISD Ch 7 Ranger

Speaking of the future, this incredible event may be in jeopardy. A federal judge’s decision to shut down 2,200 miles of Mojave Desert off-road trails (as reported by BlueRibbon Coalition) has understandably rattled the desert racing crowd, but don’t start writing King of the Hammers’ obituary just yet. King of the Hammers operates under formal permits and environmental review in the Johnson Valley OHV area, which gives it far more legal armor than loosely designated trail networks now caught in the crosshairs. The ruling is less a kill shot to marquee events and more a warning flare to land managers: tighten up environmental compliance or expect more court-ordered closures. In the short term, the race is likely safe; in the long term, expect more scrutiny, tighter boundaries, and higher costs. The era of “ride first, paperwork later” is clearly over — but Johnson Valley isn’t going dark tomorrow.

Yard ornament

The wolfy doggy

Night sky

Two decades in, King of the Hammers still feels like a dare — thrown down in the dust and answered with throttle. It is at once a professional championship round, a proving ground for the best fabricators in the game, and a weeklong reminder that the American desert still has the power to humble anyone who underestimates it. Long after the last rig clears the rocks and the final campfire burns down to embers, Hammertown will fold itself back into the silence of Johnson Valley as if it were never there at all.

But anyone who’s made the pilgrimage knows better.