In the vast expanse of desert south of Las Vegas near the California state line, well beyond the bright lights of casinos on the Strip, teams of racers gathered in the dark of early morning.
Beyond them lay hours of bruising racing over bone-jarring landscape and a thorough coating of dust -- that is, if they were lucky and didn't break down first.
Welcome to the Mint 400, held March 14 in Primm, Nevada, just south of Las Vegas.
ESPN.com sent photographer Nick Laham, a Australian now based in Brooklyn, to document the off-road race, which resumed as an annual competition in 2008 after a 20-year hiatus.
What you're looking at are the results of his efforts, from just a few feet away from the race itself and from hundreds of feet above the Nevada desert.
Hunter S. Thompson made the Mint 400 famous with his account of the 1971 race, which eventually became his book "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas." But relatively little about that race actually made it into the original Rolling Stone story.
Here's the thing, and it hasn't changed since 1971: Much of the Mint 400 is experienced as a loud rumor. Most of the massive course is visible only from the air. And the sections where spectators have access can become so choked with dust that the racers are only briefly visible as they roar past. In his story for Rolling Stone, Thompson likened it to "trying to keep track of a swimming meet in an Olympic-sized pool filled with talcum powder instead of water."
Laham found the same to be true. It took days to get all of the dirt and dust out of his hair, he said.
"There were times in the day I stood off to the side shooting one car going by and I would be completely engulfed in a cloud of dust," Laham said. "It was disconcerting -- I couldn't see the cars and they couldn't see me."
Many of Laham's ground shots feature the roller coaster at Buffalo Bill's Resort & Casino in the background. Between the clouds of dust and the juxtaposition of amusement park rides against highly specialized off-road race vehicles, the photos convey an otherworldly sense of isolation, speed and danger.
One photo in particular shows how close Laham got to the action: a red vehicle kicking up a massive flying wall of earth as it carves its way through a hairpin turn during the prerace time trials. The car actually entered the turn at a slower rate of speed; the dirt is flying through the frame from tire spin as the driver accelerates away.
"I just knew what the picture would be so I decided to stand there and hope it happens," he said.
As much as Laham captured cars and trucks catching air, he also managed to convey the hard work and frustration that comes with the territory -- a driver changing a tire by himself in the desert wilderness, or a driver and navigator in all-business mode at 6 a.m. awaiting the start of the race.
"In the helicopter you can see a lot of cars pulled out [of the race]," Laham said.
"Where the spectators are there's not that much visual reference because there is so much support in that area. But it seemed to me when I was up in the air that there were a lot of guys stopped on the side of the road."
The helicopter also allowed Laham to capture how vast and isolated the Mint 400's 100-mile course truly is. From above, the cars sometimes seem lost among a sea of tire tracks leading through the sand.
"When you see a driver trying to dig himself out or changing a tire, you get a sense of how small the car is versus the vastness of the landscape they're racing through," Laham said.