You could hear engines screaming through closed car windows as you got close to the Purcell Trench Ranch on Friday afternoon. Mountain Havoc 2017 had started, just above Bonner’s Ferry, Idaho, and quadruple-digit horsepower buggies were already in competition that would already claim two victims before the real fun started over the weekend.
Mountain Mafia Entertainment had set up another punishing course for its third annual Mountain Havoc competition—one of the roughest and most extreme 4×4 competitions in the U.S. It combines a number of smaller events—the Hill N Hole, the Tire Pull, the Rock Course, the Hillclimb, and the ending Mountain Man—to give competitors a fair chance in a variety of extreme off-road situations. For mega trucks and buggies, this is the premier event.
Mega buggies are fabricated from scratch or are based on a manufactured platform (like an F-150 or Chevy truck). All of them run enormous tires (showing up with 44s means you’re an underdog), Axle Tech or Rockwell axles, and high-horsepower engines. Nowhere else in the world do such a large number of mega trucks and buggies gather.
So how does a team of basically volunteers, headed by Mac Miltz, Ben Spinney, and Grey Whittier, do all the footwork, paperwork, and funding to put on such a big event? Simple: They bought their own park. The Mountain Mafia-owned Purcell Trench Ranch is a 90-acre private off-road park that is open for certain days and events, and provides epic off-roading in a beautiful northwest mountain setting about fifteen miles below the Canadian border.
Mountain Havoc is just one of a number of off-road events they put on at the ranch, and if you’re interested in vehicle carnage, good camping, and a grass roots competition run by enthusiasts, then you may want to reserve some vacation time for next year’s competition, because spectators are welcome!