Sirius Rally Team

Well, after last night’s awards banquet and social to-do, the Sirius Rally Team has gone it’s separate ways and headed for home.  As the lucky ones closest to (one of our) homes, we managed to make it back to Calgary by 9 in the morning on Wednesday.  As it turns out, neither of us could sleep past 4 am, so we decided to hit the road.  The Icefields Parkway is spectacular in the daytime, but not much to look at at 5 in the morning.

So, a team update on behalf of the travelling Siriusians still on the road!

As a team we all did extremely well, especially for rookies!  Car 18, Bill and Doug, finished 12th overall and 2nd in class IIE, with 271 points.  This was a great finish for a great couple of guys.  They had the most entertaining runs through the ice race course, with the snowbank crushing power of the Dodge.   Car 17, Jen, Gord and August, finished 11th overall and 2nd in class IE with 261.4 points.  They claimed first overall in the ice races on combined times, beating all of the perennial favourites in this part of the competition.  We in Car 16 finished 9th overall and first in class IIE, with 159.9 points.  Most importantly, all of us on the team had a great time, enjoyed each other’s company and made it to the end of the event with relatively little drama.

All of this was announced at the end of rally banquet at the Jasper Inn, where each car and team was described with some highlights, along with their scores and standings.  A computer projector showed photos and videos from the event, and great fun was had watching all the clean lines and major stuffs from the ice races.  After the dinner, we all chatted and talked about the event and rally in general.  It was great being able to kick back and get to know so many people from across the continent(s, for car 12).

All in all, a fantastic event and a great experience!

Josh

So we’re back in civilization, or at least Dawson Creek, just across the Alberta border in northern BC.  Since my last update we have travelled north from Inuvik to Tuktoyaktuk, been fogged in on the Beaufort Sea on the drive back south, spent the night in the 1970’s chic Eagle Plains Hotel, returned to Dawson City, Whitehorse and points south, and are now at the end of the Alaska Highway.

Day by day updates:

Friday - Departed Inuvik NWT for Tuktoyaktuk via the ice road.  Arrived in Tuk about 9:30 am, and got some good pictures of ourselves at the Trans Canada Trail marker at the tip of the town.  Walked around town before heading back south again, and got invited in to the town office by the staff, cause they were surprized to see so many cars driving to the town that time of year.  Headed south on the ice road in a thick ice fog, but made it back to Inuvik safely.  Did a little shopping and got some photos of the unique architecture around the place.  Headed south to Eagle Plains on the Dempster Highway. 

Saturday - Departed Eagle Plains early for a side tour to Dawson City in daylight, discovered that at -30 and the middle of winter, Dawson is pretty much shut down.  Got some great photos of Dawson, then headed south for Whitehorse.

Sunday - Had a short (8.4 mile) TSD section in Whitehorse, then off to the lake for an ice race.  Managed to only pick up 4 points on the TSD, and then didn’t take maximum points at the ice race!  Our teammates, Car 17, took fastest overall time of the day, to lead the ice races overall for 4WD studded tire cars.  After the ice races, we headed south on the Alaska Highway to the Watson Lake signpost forest and the Northern Rockies Lodge where we spent the night.  This place is amazing - almost the middle of nowhere, and just a great facility.  Saw about 50 buffalo along the highway on the drive.  Very cool!  On the way down, stopped at the Liard Hotsprings for a soak, and got to relax in the steaming water while the air temperature was about -5 degrees.  Great way to end the day.

Monday - a long transit day, we headed south on the Alaska Highway again, ending in Dawson Creek.  Along the way, we had TSD sections in Fort Nelson and just outside Dawson Creek.  Picked up 16 points total, middle of the pack for the day, but we are still managing to lead class 2E.  Had a short parking lot session trying to help Gord, our teammate and Subaru tech, patch one of the officials cars whose timing belt seems to have jumped a few cogs.  I wasn’t much help, but I felt good about contributing a flashlight.  We are resting up for the final day tomorrow - 330 miles south from Dawson Creek to Jasper, with one TSD and lots of transits.

Josh

Dawson City, Yukon Territory to Inuvik, Northwest Territories - Halfway!

The day started with a clear, crisp, but not too cold morning departure from Dawson City.  While it was still dark, all the rally cars departed the hotel and headed back to the Dempster Highway corner, where we all turned north on the road to Eagle Plains.  While the sky was slightly overcast, the visibility was great.  The Dempster runs in a valley, and the road looks like gravel, but the frozen surface actually gives it great traction.  We stopped for a few photo opportunities, and the weather was amazing – just a few degrees below zero!

After Eagle Plains, the road continued on through to Fort McPherson and Inuvik, where we are spending the night.  We arrived at around 6 pm local time, just early enough to catch the sunset, and to see a few of the sights in town. 

We’re off early tomorrow for the drive on the Mackenzie river up to the Beaufort Sea and Tuktoyaktuk, than back south again to retrace our steps all the way to Eagle Plains.

Link to the Dempster Highway map HERE.

Whitehorse, Yukon Territory to Dawson City, Yukon Territory

Wednesday morning started with an actual breakfast at the hotel restaurant, a nice break from the road food we had been enjoying.  We started the morning with the Long Lake TSD regularity, a short in-and-out road near the Whitehorse sewage lagoons (thanks for the tip, Marusia!), where we actually managed to score 5 points total over 8 checkpoints, including 5 zeroes!  Then it was off to frozen Schwatka Lake for the first ice races of the rally.

A Whitehorse snowmobile club plowed a track on the surface of the lake, and each car was allowed to take up to 4 runs (2 per driver, maximum).  Evans did the first 2 runs, and I took the second stint.  Considering that the car has only 165 horsepower, we did fairly well, running about 5 seconds slower than the top cars.  With 9 hours allowed to get to Dawson City, we paused for lunch with our friends Marusia and Brendan, and Marusia’s twins Audry and Callum, before heading north again.  When we were just short of Dawson, we stopped to see the total lunar eclipse, then continued on to the cool Eldorado Hotel in downtown Dawson.

New Hazelton, BC to Whitehorse, Yukon Territory

Tuesday was the longest travel day of the rally, with over 840 miles to cover.  The Sirius cars split up in the morning, with Jen, Gord and August leaving early to make a side trip to Bear Glacier near the Alaska border, and us following a little later.  We met up at Medzian Junction on the Cassiar Highway, a very scenic route north through heli-skiing country.  This road had been closed the previous week due to avalanches, and most of the gas stations along the route were either closed or frozen, making the trip a little difficult for the cars that went to Bear Glacier.  The rally had a stop for a great buffet lunch in Dease Lake, just prior to departing for a short TSD section on the highway heading north.  Then, cars 16, 17, 18 and 19 all travelled together as far as the Yukon border for a photo opportunity.  At the border, 16 and 17 stopped for fuel and then headed the next 460 kilometers to Whitehorse on the Alaska Highway.  This was a long, wide open highway that reminded me of the road in to Fort McMurray, just without the traffic.  All in all, a very long day, but lots of fun, with great scenery.

Quesnel to New Hazelton
As we discovered late Sunday night, the Quesnel stock car track was too covered in snow to run the day’s ice race. Because of this, the organizers decided to add a TSD regularity instead, the (apparently) infamous 11% Grade road. This started at a local school and wound it’s way through some old logging roads and farmland. The navigator (Josh) discovered that there were several errors in the calculations, and was trying to redo them just before the start of the regularity. As it turns out, the road was quite difficult, especially with the checkpoint placements being located somewhere near the most difficult corner!
After finishing 11% Grade, we all returned to Quesnel and resumed the scheduled route, starting with the Blackwater Road TSD. This was actually a fairly wide open road for most of it’s length, but did not have many features to check the rally odometer against, making it tricky. After the end of the regularity, the road actually got much tighter and twistier, leading to some interesting driving from some of the cars, in particular the SUVs, which tended to launch themselves off the bigger bumps in the road. A long transit eventually led to the Fraser Lake TSD. This was a tricky section, due to the 12 mile per hour stretch in the middle. It was difficult to drive slowly enough through this section to make the checkpoint on time, and we ended up 20 seconds early. After we finished the 12 mph length, the remainder of the TSD was straightforward. We continued on north from there to Burns Lake, where we had a great lunch courtesy of one of the competitors and his friend Nathan at a local restaurant. After passing through Smithers, we finished the day in New Hazelton.

It looks surprisingly like the back end of a GMC Envoy, at least some of the time.  More on that later!

Sunday started cold and sunny, with a coating of frost on the cars in Kirkland.  We had a few stickers to add to the Forester before the official start, then some team photos in the parking lot.  Bill and Doug’s truck is roughly eight times larger than the other two cars on the Sirius team, put together. 

From the start at the hotel, we transited north to the start of the first TSD, Mosquito Lake.  This was a 39.5 mile twisty paved road through the Washington countryside.  Fun road, and plenty of checkpoints to catch out our rusty TSD rally skills.  No major dramas for us at this stage, and the regularity ended a short drive from the Sumas border crossing.  A quick hop back into Canada, and we were heading north through the Fraser Canyon to Williams Lake.  This transit was 312 miles long, and took us from 10:46 am until 6:15 pm.  We had a little extra time when we arrived in Williams Lake, so we took a few minutes to replace the relay for one set of our driving lights before the night’s TSD.  The wiring for the lights kept blowing fuses mysteriously, so we fixed that again.

Then, it was time for the short Soda Creek TSD, and our first real taste of ice and snow since we finished driving the Coquihalla on Friday night.  The starting order has us behind a rented GMC Envoy SUV.  Around 15 miles into the 17 mile TSD, we caught up to them.  This means that we were either a) a minute early (bad) or b) they were a minute late (bad for them, not too bad for us).  We’re going with b), at least until we see the scores!  Because we were stuck behind them for a few miles, we lost some time at a couple of checkpoints.  For those of you contemplating TSD rallying, proper etiquette when caught by another car is to pull over and let them by.  No big deal though!

Another medium transit north to Quesnel, and we’re getting settled in for the night.

Josh

It’s Saturday afternoon in Kirkland, Washington, and both the Canadian Sirius Rally Team cars have arrived (with their people), although there was a short holdup for Jennifer, Gord and August getting here.  Currently, everyone is checked in, and we’ve gotten through tech without any hiccups.  Evans and Josh arrived in Chilliwack, BC, Friday evening after driving through Rogers Pass in true Canadian winter conditions (I’ll post a picture as soon as I’ve figured out how).

Tonight, the rally kicks off with a reception here at the host hotel, then tomorrow will consist of 483.351 miles from Kirkland to Quesnel, BC, including two TSD sections.

 Time to start calculating!

 JPK