Plucky gearheads will bring their most cherished lemons and clunkers to East Lewis County this weekend to race in the Run Gifford Run Poker Run Gambler 500, which is set to start Saturday, according to Veterans Memorial Museum Executive Director Chip Duncan.
The first day of the two-day event features a road rally race and poker run — where drivers have to navigate to certain GPS coordinates — and also doubles as a trash cleanup service throughout the Gifford Pinchot National Forest, Duncan said.
Rally race check-in and late registration begins at 8 a.m. Saturday, Aug. 5, at the Lewis County Fire District 14 fire station in Randle. The rally will end at 6 p.m., with awards handed out at 7 p.m. followed by live music performed by East Lewis County-based band Camp 1 Road.
Rally racers will drive a loop through Randle, Packwood, Ashford, Elbe, Mineral, Morton and Glenoma and explore Forest Service roads leading to Mount St. Helens and Mount Adams.
On Sunday, Aug. 6, HooptieX racing will be held from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. on a course set up in Randle.
“HooptieX is taking cheap cars and putting them in a rally course. We call it ‘Walmart’ racing, because it’s got such a low bar for entry, and the course is set up so you’re not really going over 35 mph,” Duncan said. “It’s literally for somebody to see if racing is for them. It’s easy, just borrow mom’s Toyota Corolla, borrow a motorcycle helmet and bomb it around the track.”
The Gambler 500 originally began in Oregon in 2014 as an endurance challenge among 28 drivers to see whose car would survive a 500-mile off-road race, according to Car and Driver magazine. Gambler 500 events are now held nationwide and internationally.
Duncan first became involved with Gambler 500 events in 2018. The Gifford Pinchot National Forest has frequently become an illegal dump site lately, according to Duncan, which is why he decided to move the race to the region.
“The idea is not only is this a navigational challenge, but drivers realized as they were going through the woods that there’s all this illegal trash being dumped on forest lands, Forest Service roads, national park lands and things like that, and nobody is there to pick it up,” Duncan said. “So they all started picking up trash, and I think today we’re at a million tons of trash (collected) globally.”
Aside from cleaning up dumped garbage, the race features a poker run element, where drivers will be given coordinates of local businesses to stop at during the race.
“These cars break down, so the neat part about it is the auto parts stores out there in Randle and Morton are gonna get a lot of business, and we’ve got all the restaurants out there, so drivers will be eating food from there,” Duncan said.
A total of five businesses will be marked as poker run stops, requiring drivers to visit and collect a sticker to receive their poker hand cards at the rally’s end. Seven additional businesses will be Scrabble stops, where drivers will pick a Scrabble letter out of a bag.
At the end of the rally, drivers will then create a word with their seven letters to see who can get the highest point value, longest word and highest letter value.
Registration for the rally race is currently open online for $20, and weekend camping passes can also be purchased for $20.
For more information or to register and purchase a camping pass, visit https://rocktoriver.redpodium.com/run-gifford-run-2023.
All proceeds from the Run Gifford Run poker run, camping passes and Gambler 500 T-shirt sales benefit the Veterans Memorial Museum.
Some safety requirements include a crash helmet, car battery tie downs, working standard seatbelts and cars wider than their height to avoid rollover risk.
For more information on Gambler 500 races, visit https://www.gambler500.com/.
