King Of The Hammers 2025: Top 5 Craziest Things We Saw

Rolling your side by side. Monster-trucking your Smart Car. Blasting fireworks at all hours of the night. These are things your mom probably warned you not to do. But when you find yourself in the California desert, alongside 80,000 other crazed offroad fans, at what’s been described as “The Burning Man for Off-Road,” this is what we call typical antics. So come along and listen to our tale of the craziest sh*t we saw at King of the Hammers 2025.

A trophy truck stops in the pits. They were in and out before you could say, “King of the Hammers 2025 Toyo Tires Desert Challenge Presented by Monster Energy.”

Night crawlers navigated the boulders and the crowds in the Chocolate Thunder dry river bed.

But first: we needed a guide. Somebody who could navigate the undercurrents during a week in “Hammertown.” We’d need a professional to help us get through this sand tsunami. And luckily we had one: professional stormchaser and DECKED Ambassador Ricky Forbes.

Who’s that handsome man in a DECKED jumpsuit? Why, it’s none other than professional storm chaser and TV personality Ricky Forbes!

The DECKED Crew was looking more iconic than the Statue of Liberty with the Eiffel Tower and the Taj Mahal in the background.

So with Ricky locked in and our hands wrapped around the pleather steering wheel of a rental RV, it was time to go get after it.

Top Five Craziest Things We Saw:

1. WATCHING CHRISTOPHER POLVOORDE GO BACK-TO-BACK

We knew we had the top dog coming into this year’s King of the Hammers, and DECKED Ambassador Christopher Polvoorde proved once again that he has that dog in him — going back-to-back as Unlimited Class winner at the 2025 King of the Hammers Desert Challenge. Christopher’s pit crew rivaled any crew on planet earth, too, with pit stop times so fast that you could blink and miss it.

Chris Polvoorde’s pit crew was just like a formula team in the middle of the desert.

Chris Polvoorde went full-send at King of the Hammers in his trophy truck, on his way to the win, jumping 10+ feet above the desert below.

#1, baby! Chris Polvoorde celebrated his win on the podium with the one-finger salute (the index finger, for those wondering).

And as if that wasn’t enough winning, our buddies Kyle Jergensen and Camburg Racing pulled in their own back to back win in the T2 class, with an overall 2nd place finish!

Kyle Jergensen jumped his way toward another win in the T2 class, sending it across the infield gap jump in his trophy truck.

2. BEING BEST-DRESSED AT THE DUSTBOWL

We (the DECKED Crew) might not win as many races as Christopher Polvoorde, but we’ll always try to win best-dressed. We enlisted legendary tattoo artist TallBoy to design us the baddest artwork this side of the Salton Sea. Then we printed it on our matching Dickies jumpsuits. Yeah, we were looking fresh. Fresh for a gang of people sleeping in an RV in the sand.

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The DECKED Crew went all out in matching jumpsuits to win the distinction of “best dressed in Hammertown.” It wasn’t an official award, but they won it nonetheless.

We had a custom graphic designed by Tallboy666. Once it was printed out on our jumpsuits, it was looking real good.

We put the Tallboy666 graphic through an AI image description service and it broke their website. Just kidding, it actually said, “A vibrant graphic design features a teal off-road vehicle navigating a rocky terrain, amidst desert landscapes and various elements, including a snake, skull and bones.” which is actually pretty accurate.

3. RALLYING A RAPTOR

It’s not every day you see a Ford Raptor getting the full beans. Lucky for us, that day came, and we were the ones giving ‘er the frijoles. We joined the Sparky’s Raptor Rally, powered by Optima Batteries, for a cruise out to Ericksen Dry Lakebed to let ‘er rip. When you’ve got unlimited space and trails to play on, you get to see what a Raptor can really do off road. And it was good.

Somebody got a Ford Raptor up onto three wheels, and it may or may not have been one of us.

The vibes were firing at the DECKED tent, which was curiously placed in the middle of the desert with nothing around but dust.

4. GOING WARP SPEED IN A TROPHY TRUCK

Rallying a raptor is fun. Riding in a trophy truck at full gas, with a champion racer behind the wheel, is something else entirely. Mama definitely would NOT have approved of this. But who can turn down the chance to be a passenger in a high-performance off-road race truck designed for the most extreme terrain, large jumps, and high speed corners? If anyone tells you we scream-cried… you have no evidence.

Our boys Ricky and Ross have big grins on their faces, and their eyeballs in the back of their sockets, as they rocket across the desert, aboard Chris Polvoorde’s trophy truck.

4. BEHOLDING THE CHOCOLATE THUNDER(DOME)

How do we describe it? Chocolate Thunder is like a roman gladiator arena, except instead of gladiators, it’s crazy rock-crawlers driving across boulders. And the crowd is also inside the arena with the gladiators. Seeing the carnage at Chocolate Thunder in person and living to tell the story about it was such an epic highlight. Words don’t do it justice. You just had to be there.