Barbara’s flight home was scheduled for 1:50 AM on Sunday. The good news was that the hotel had a shuttle. The bad news was that she was leaving. We had had a wonderful trip together. There were disappointments – we didn’t get to drive the MacKenzie River and we didn’t see the Northern Lights. We really needed to practice doing TSDs before we came. But, all in all, it was a wonderful trip. I was to miss her greatly on the solo drive home.

Colin and Ramona, Ohio Root, John and I have formed up a convoy to travel together for the first couple of days back east. The first day is to Whitehorse a mere 725 miles.

We meet up at 6:00 for a quick breakfast and then into the cars for departure in the dark. John has a detour to the airport to drop off Gretchen who is flying out and will meet up with us on the way. Out of the hotel, north on the nearly empty and dark streets to a fuel stop. Then onto the freeway to Wasilla.

After all the driving we’ve done in the narrow, ice-covered roads in the far north, the freeways are actually irritating. This really must be a sickness if you’d rather drive the roads of the far north rather than the wide, maintained freeways of Anchorage. A sickness, indeed. I hope there’s no cure.

Off the freeway at Wasilla and east to Palmer. It’s just dawn and the light is coming up. We’re following a river towards Glenallen and Colin calls the first moose. They’re along side the road and they’re very hard to see. Fortunately, they’re down and and resting after the nights feeding.

There are are always moose along side rivers. They feed on willow shoots and branches (eats, shoots and runs or is it eats shoots and runs). That’s why they’re such a danger on the road at night. Their coats are very dark, they’re very big, they can be very cranky, they’re very mobile, and they’re not very bright. Unlike they proverbial “deer in the headlights”, moose don’t seem to care about headlights and have a terrible propensity for walking in front of cars. The old saw about moose is, “You don’t want to hit a moose. You wreck the car and then you have a pissed-off moose on your hands. If you live through the crash, you might not live through the pissed-off moose.”

Up the river valley. More moose (17 in all). Some deer. A couple of caribou. But it’s light now and we’re climbing out of the valley away from the river. The only danger now is snowplows, graders and loaders. And the occasional truck. On to Whitehorse for the night.

As we pass Destruction bay, Ohio slows and pulls over to the left hand side of the road. I pull in behind him to see if there’s a problem. He had stopped near a roadside memorial to a young man who died (details unknown) that was built by his family. It’s beautiful place dedicated to the young man’s apparent love of the area and the culture that envelopes it. Some pictures and then retreat to the car to escape the frigind wind. On the road again.

The next day, we stop for fuel in Watson Lake. There’s not much to Watson Lake but it is an intersection of two roads – the Alcan and the Campbell Highway that heads north to intersect with the Klondike. And it has the Sign Forest.

The sign forest is a huge collection of signs, license plates and other detritus left by travelers. We seen it many times but I never left anything to the collection. Colin volunteers a license plate from his wounded A4 (which is still running along), we sign it and nail it to a post near the entrance to the forest. Take our pictures.

On day three of the trip, we part company. The previous night, Ohio had gotten too tired to drive and decided to stop at a truckers motel in Pink Mountain. I had stopped with him but I wanted to keep driving (I had 4,500 miles to drive to get home). On to catch John and Colin.

I knew that fuel was going to be an issue on this leg and I was hoping to just make it into Fort St. John. Just about 15 miles short of Fort St. John I caught up with John and Colin. The low fuel light is on. I’m hoping I can make it. I don’t want to add fuel from the jerry can kin the dark on the side of the road.

Just a mile short of the town, the car stumbles. Climbing a short hill, it stumbles again. And again. Then nothing as I crest the hill. At the botton of the hill there’s a gas station. Coast in engine off to the first available gas pump. Thank ya, thank ya, thank ya.

The next day after Dawson Creek, we part company. John and Colin are heading back west toward the west coast. I’m going on east towards Edmonton. At least, three more days to go to get home.

The plan is to make Saskatoon, the enter the US, a night in Normal, Illinois, then home on Friday night. A couple of long days but this trip is wearing out.

I stop in Saskatoon just as a snowstorm is ending. The city is buried in about 8 inches of snow and the snow removal crews are blocking streets and really not helping much. I stop at a Best Western as soon as I enter the city. No room. Move on a couple more motels. Still no room. One desk clerk gives me a map of the hotels in Saskatoon and I strat checking them off. Finally, in desparation, I ask why there aren’t any rooms in town – it’s the Briers. WTF are the Briers?

The Briers are the All Canada Curling Championships and every curler(?) is in town to slide stones on ice for fame and glory. Even rooms in crack houses have been rented out for months. On to Winnipeg. This return is starting to really lose it’s charm.

A long run down through Manitoba to the US border and then down into North Dakota to I-94. It’s dark by the time I make it through Minneapolis and find some place to stay for the night. Two more hard days and I should be home.

The enext morning I text Yvon to find out where he is. If he’s in the moid-west, maybe we can meet up for dinner. He can’t deviate from his route but I can. A few minutes later, he texts back that he’s in Chicago leaving for Alabama. That’ll work.

We start trying to work out where we can meet. Since I’m spo far north of him, we decide that he’ll probably be stopping south of Nashville and I can probably catch him there. A long run down through Illinois and then across Kentucky to Tennessee and Nashville.

By the time I reach Nashville it raining and as I head south out of Nashville, the rainfall reaches biblical proportions. The road is crowded, narrow and under construction. I really don’t need this.

I had expected the truck stop that we are meeting up in to much closer to Nashville but it turns out to be a bout 60 miles south. Ugh! The good news is that there’s an Econolodge right across the street.

I finally get there. Find the hotel. Endure the ridiculously long and precise check in procedure. (Come on! It’s only a room in a very old Econologe. How complicated can this be?) Call Yvon and meet up for a steak dinner.

He’s looking great and we have a nice meet up. It was worth the drive and the extra miles. Finally off to bed.

The next morning were greeted by a rolled semi flatbed on the street right outside the motel. A truck tried to take the exit too fast and his load shifted causing the truck to roll on its side. There’s a crowd of truckers watching and kibbutzing the recovery process. Call Yvon to say good bye, load the car and head for home.

The last day. The route takes me over I-40 to North Carolina and I-40 is definitely not my favorite road. Boring until the Gorge. But the weather has cleared overnight and Yvon and I chat along the way using a new wireless headset I’d bought for my mobile.

About 4:00PM, I roll into the driveway and turn off the car. It’s been 4,600 miles home and about 9,200 miles total. It’s good to be home. I wonder if the dog’ll remember me.

Obi-Wan

Among other reasons, since this year’s Alcan was ending in Anchorage, the rally was timed to end the day before the start of the Iditarod Dog Sled Race. The Iditarod is the famous dogsled race that honors the rescue of the residents of the town of Nome, Alaska during a diphtheria outbreak in 1925 when serum was raced from Anchorage to Nome. The grueling, more than 1,000 mile race starts with a winter festival that is the highlight of the Anchorage winter.

We arrived in Anchorage the night before the start and, after checking into the hotel set out to for dinner. On the way back, the preparations for the start were well under way. Though Anchorage has had a record amount of snow this year and it had been snowing the day before the race start, the streets had been cleared. Now at 9 o’clock at night were bringing in snow to cover the 4th street with almost a foot of snow to make a surface that the dog teams could pull the sleds on. Truck after truck dropped snow and graders pushed it onto the street.

The race was scheduled to start at 10:00 so we were out and over to 4th street by 9:00 to see the teams prepare for the start. Tyhe dogs are leached to the kennel trucks that have brought them. They seem bored and sleepy but as the teams start to harness the dogs the team’s excitement starts to mount and the air fills with barking and howls. As we watch one team, one dog starts to howl as though he was baying in the forest. Soon the entire team is howling. They’re ready to go.

The actual race start takes place the next day in Palmer outside of Anchorage. The start in Anchorage is a ceremonial start so the is a festive air with each team being introduced and many of the teams carrying a passenger in the sled. Some of the sleds are even dragging a second sled which, I’m told is to slow done the dogs who, left to the own devices would rocket down the street.

We find a place in the upper deck of a parking garage to watch the teams go by. The crowd loves it. The camera crews take their pictures and videos. The local TV stations carry the start live. It is a great event to watch. The start of what they call the Last Great Race. Certainly not for the faint of heart or body.

Later in the afternoon, we return to 4th street for the Running of the Reindeer (?). Now, if you take 20,000 or so people who have been partying for the better part of 24 hours and want to get them involved in the event what could be a better way than to sell tickets to run down a couple of blocks of 4th street chased by a small herd of reindeer. Kind of an imitation of the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona. In the Running of the Reindeer, the danger isn’t being gored. The danger is being trampled by the crowd of drunken participants that you are running with.

The crowd is just a bit crazier than you might suspect. It’s cold. The snow in the street is deep. The crowd is well lubricated. There are teams in costume. There are people nearly naked. There is a distinct possibility of hypothermia for some. What could possibly go wrong.

Actually, not much. The participants are staged in the same area that the dogsled teaks were staged in in the morning for the start of the Iditarod. The announcer runs the event. The Running is broken into smaller groups. Women from outside Alaska. Men from outside Alaska. Local Women. And then local men. For each run the reindeer brought up the street in harness. The announced gives the start to the humans and, 30 seconds later, they release the reindeer. The reindeer really don’t see the humor in this at all. Their only goal is to get through the stumbling mass of tourists, drunks and morons in front of them as quickly as possible. The result is hilarious for the participants and the spectators. Not so much for the reindeer. And fortunately, no one has told the reindeer that they have to do this 4 times. If they knew that, things might be considerably more difficult.

After the 4th race, the festival starts to break up and we do some shopping and then wander back to the hotel. The Run with the Reindeers is the perfect ending to FurRondy. It fits the collective personality of the native Alaskans and furthers the grasp on the transplants. Alaska is a very tough place. FurRondy is a way of celebrating some of the things that make living here so difficult. And, of course, the drink and smoke certainly help.

Back to the hotel to pack. Barbara has a flight at 1:50 in the morning and we have a final celebration dinner with the entire rally. I load the things that we don’t need into the car and load in some excess baggage to take home for Hal and Peter. They have sold their car to Jerry Hines to avoid the cost of shipping it back to SC and are flying back to Colorado (Hal) and SC (Peter).

The last dinner together is in a second floor of a restaurant a few blocks from the hotel. A few of us walk over together and in a few minutes the rest of us start wandering in. Beer and heavy or d’euvres. Announcements, speeches, awards, promises to stay in touch.

In any experience that bonds people like this rally does, there are always these pledges to maintain the friendships that have been formed in the intensity of the event. But we know that few will really flower. We’re too diverse a group geographically and though the pledges are sincere, most will simply pass with the passing of time. Until 2016.

Many of the people will sign up for the next Alcan Winter Rally as soon as they can. Some, like me, will go home and take the 2012 entry form, fill it out, scratch out 2012, write in 2016, fax it to Jerry and put it on oyur mental schedule. All that will remain is enduring the wait til 2016.

Obi-wan

Today is the last day of the rally. A TSD here in Valdez. A transit to Wasilla. A TSD in Wasilla. A transit to the hotel in Anchorage. Check in at the MTC. Done.

Of course, it wasn’t that easy. First there’s the TSD in Valdez and the snow. We have a TSD right out of the box before we leave. And, with all the snow, route finding maybe a bit of a problem. To say nothing of seeing the check points.

We’re off at 8:04. Car #1 has gone. Car #2 doesn’t start after the engine lunch at the ice stage. Car #3 goes and then us. Left at the start. Right at the stop sign. Left on to the main road at the stop sign. No checkpoints so far. Wrong. Diamond Jim is in a white Tyvek haz-mat-style jump suit buried in the snow at the top of one of the enormous snowbanks that make up the canyons that the roads are in. I never saw him. Barbara said that she thought that she had seen him. His car was parked a few meters away empty.

Down the road toward Glenallen. We’re looking for a right turn. The second right turn of a loop road. We take a right only to find ourselves in the parking lot of a convenience store. A quick left to the exit. Nearly take the door off a car at the front of the convenience store. Glaring look from the girl getting out of the car. Take a right on to the correct road.

Now we’re seriously behind by taking 3 turns instead of just one and the CAS speed is high so making up the lost time has us speeding to catch up. Take a right at the next stop sign. Give back some of the made up time. Speed up again on the following straight only yo see Jim and Suzanne Elder in car #5, coming the opposite way!!

Things are going badly enough as it is without having to worry about which of us is going the wrong way. We’re sure (or as sure as we can convince ourselves to be) the we are right and that Jim and Suzanne are wrong but seeing them justr adds to the confusion. We’re tired. Back to the main road. Right toward Glenallen and the end of the TSD.

Back up through the canyon to the Thomson Pass. The wind is howling and we are driving quite fast. Occasionally, the wind gusts and the road ice combine to make for an interesting moment or two. And the visibility is just plain atrocious.

Over the top of the pass. Down the north side through the bblowing snow and wind gusts. Just about where we picked up the snow yesterday, the snow stops today. In a few more miles and down a few hundred feet, the clouds start to break and the view is just beautiful. On to Glenallen.

We stop for fuel at the crossroad of the Richardson and Glenallen highways. Take the left onto the Glenallen and through the town of Glenallen. We’ve been warned that the police in Glenallen supplement the budget with copious speed tickets. Everyone creeps at the posted speed to the start of the final TSD in Wasilla.

The TSD goes about as well as 2 tired people can do the last TSD of a very long rally. Our hearts aren’t really in it. At a fork in the road, I don’t know whether to go right or left and Barbara is immersed in setting up the next CAS. I go left. Should have gone right. Screech to a stop. Reverse the rally computer. Back up at high speed. Reverse the rally computer again to forward. Speed trying to make up the lost time.

Come up to a stop light that turns green just as we arrive but a school bus pulls in front of us front the right. Apparently, the rally gods are trying to tell us something. I interpret that to be, “Lighten up, dude. It’s been a great rally and you’re not going to change your finish in these last few meters.”

The end of the TSD. Left on to the road to downtown Wasilla. On to Anchorage.

Obi-wan

http://rallyroadie.org/downloads/Alcan5000_2012.kml

Click on this link, save the KML file and open it with Google Earth or any other mapping software that understands KML files.

Enjoy.

Obi-wan

The extraordinary amount of snow that Valdez has gotten this winter has made the scheduled ice race impossible. (Hmmm, where have we heard that before?) The lake where we were to have the race hasn’t been plowed by the town because they have literally exhausted their snow removal budget. They actually spent the entire amount of the budget in the month of January and it’s been snowing steadily ever since. They just could not scrape the ice on the lake for us. We have a change of venue.

The “ice race” has been moved to a road that goes to a landfill and it has been changed from an “ice race”, a kind of slalowm, to an “ice stage”, more like a stage of a stage rally. The idea is to start on command like a start of a stage rally stage go downm the road to a turn around and come back to the finish line a few hundred meters short of the start line. Go as fast as you can. Best time wins.

The stage is a slightly down hill start the leads in to a right hand sweeping turn that exits into a left hand sweeping turn that leads into a short straightaway. Turn around and run the reverse to the finish. The good news is that the sweepers are very wide. The bad news: the snow banks are huge, high and frozen. Hitting one could be ugly. What could possibly go wrong?

Jerry leads us on a single file recon lap. A slow recon lap. That doesn’t prevent Paul Eklund, the #2 car, from exploring the edges and practicing a handbrake turn at the turn around. Back at the staging area, people are taking gear out of the cars to lighten them and lowering tire pressure to try to get more grip. I just remove the spare and the gas cans from the roof rack just in case I really screw up and get the car on its roof.

We line up for the start. The laps are timed by minutes to 4 decimal places or ten-thousandths of a minute. A ten-thousandth of a minute is .006 seconds. The first car puts up a time of about 1.27?? minutes and Paul Eklund promptly lowers that to 1.12?? minutes. I’m off 4th and I come in at 1.15?? minutes which is good for second until Max in car #12 runs. He gets second by beating me by about .004 minutes or .24 seconds. Over a mile on a snow-covered, ice road.

The competitive juices are flowing now. I hadn’t expected to beat Eklund. He’s got a ton of experience and rallies frequently all year long. But I was surprised by Max. I had missed a shift on the handbrake turn on the turn around so I’m hoping to get back in front of him on the second lap.

My lap ran well. The WRX just loves to drift in the turns so a small flick on the entry to the sweepers got the rear out nicely so that heavy throttle and opposite steering lock go the car through the turns quickly. A slight lift of the throttle at the end of the first sweeper got the car to pivot around for a perfect drift into the entry of the opposite second sweeper. Turn around and come back to the finish line.

I had been joking with another driver about the finish: “Don’t lift until the spectators start to scatter.” A common mistake at the finish line is to let up on the throttle too early. As I came out of the second sweeper, I just stomped on the throttle until I was sure that I was over the finish line. And the spectators were starting to scatter. Of course, slowing the car before hitting the car waiting to start next was a bit problematic but I got it slowed and ended up with a good time.

On the second lap, all of us lowered our times by about the same amount, .004 to .005 minutes, so the order didn’t change. I again missed my shift in the handbrake turn at the turn around and that cost me second place.

Knowing that I needed a really fast finish to have any chance to beat Max, I stood on the throttle through both of the sweepers on the return and over the finish line. No spectators scattering this time, they had learned their lesson on the first lap. ut bI was going a bit faster and straight line braking wasn’t going to slow me enough so I pitched the car sideways to scrub of some speed and as I stopped at the start line, Jerry’s only comment was, “I see you haven’t lost your stage rally skills.”

All in all, not bad. I think I could have had second but third wasn’t bad for something I do only once every 4 years. And it could have been much worse. Paul Eklund blew his engine on the second lap and that would knock him out of the rally. And Colin Stenhouse rolled his Audi A4 on a bank in the sweepers.

Colin drifted a bit too wide and the Audi climbed up the snow bank sideways. That caused the car to do a slow roll on to its roof. A dented roof, a crushed sun roof, a severely cracked windshield but no mortal damage to he or the car. Both very lucky.

And that’s how it ended: Paul first, Max second and me third. A fun race.

Back to the hotel. Help Colin try to seal up the sunroof on the A4. Dinner and bed.

Obi-wan

During the night, the motel started to fill with snow mobilers (or as the Palin Snarky Dictionary calls them – “snow machine operators”). They’re arriving for a trip that starts on Friday to ride to Dawson City over the Taylor and Top of the World highways. The distance to Dawson City is about 200 miles and the highways are closed for the winter – officially listed as “impassable”. And people think we’re crazy! What could go wrong?

The parking lot is awash in “snow machines” rocketing along. Time to leave before territoriality sets in. Load the car. Check out. Get in line for the morning TSD that starts in Fast Eddy’s parking lot.

There’s been a lot of snow lately and some of the roads in Tok are near on to impassable and there aren’t many roads to begin with. One of Timing and Scoring’s vehicles got stuck on one of the roads that the TSD was to use so the TSD has been shortened to just less than 3 miles.

That doesn’t necessarily make the TSD any easier. It does encourage the T/S people to get even sneakier.

At first glance, a TSD seems like it should be very easy to “zero” (get a perfect score.) You just start on time, calculate when you should cross the end line of the TSD, stop somewhere on the TSD and wait out the time so that you cross the end line at the exact time you calculated. If that were so, everyone would get a “zero” and no one (or everyone) would win.

But the reality is more complicated. The Timing and Scoring people hide themselves at places along the route of the TSD so that you can’t stray from the route and so that you have to be at this hidden place at the time that they calculate in order to get a “zero”. T & S can be downright creative about those hidden check points.

We leave on our minute, head toward Fairbanks on the Alcan and take the first right. The roads here are on a square grid so every turn is a stop right turn and every check point is right after the turn. Some of the turns are right after a stop sign which makes things even more difficult. I see a couple of the check points but completely miss Shirley Gardner hiding behind a sign a good ways before Sweep 2′s truck. It’s a very tricky 2.7 miles. On to Valdez.

The weather clears as we head down the Tok Cut-off and the ride is quite pretty. We’re seeing more traffic now that we’re getting closer to Anchorage but there’s still not much and we’re making great time. Stop in Glenallen for fuel and head down the Richardson Highway to Thomson Pass and Valdez.

As we approach the lead up to Thomson Pass, the sky becomes overcast and it soon starts to snow. It still very cold so the snow is very light and fluffy which makes for terrible visibility. As we climb, the weather just gets worse but we’re still holding good speed until we come up on a semi tanker climbing slowly up toward the summit of the pass.

We eventually get by him, summit the pass and start down toward Valdez. The visibility improves but the wind really picks up. In the narrow canyons on the south side of the pass, the wind is a big factor.

And the snow amounts are just unbelievable. Valdez has gotten 37 FEET of snow so far this winter. That’s so far beyond the previous record that it’s absurd. As we get into Valdez, all you can see are are snow banks that form the sides of the roads. The street signs have been dug out, though, and we find the hotel. Check in, have lunch and get ready for the afternoon ice race.

Obi-wan

The schedule calls for us to redo the two TSDs and then move on to Tok in Alaska. The first TSD is the Long Lake TSD which starts in the Steamboat parking lot. I remember from 2008 that the trick with this TSD is to leave early because, unlike the first time we did the TSD, there is morning traffic to deal with complete with school buses.

In 2008, we didn’t know why the cars were leaving until we left on time and got stuck in traffic. As we sat waiting for traffic to clear we could see the clock getting farther and farther behind. We leave almost a minute early and the plan is to wait at the hospital until the clock catches up.

The plan works but we end up blowing a couple of CAS changes and we end up with a bad out run. The return run goes better but we can’t make up the damage that we did in the out run. Oh well.

We get back to the hotel. Barbara goes out to do a little shopping and I stay and reorganize the car and load the bags. Then we head out to do the Fish Lake TSD. Fish Lake goes better but we’re tired and we just want to move on to Fast Eddy’s at Tok.

The drive up the Alcan Highway is beautiful and relaxing. There’s no traffic and we move on quickly. Soon were in Tok and check in. Dinner and bed. Tomorrow we have a TSD here and then an ice race in Valdez.

Obi-wan

An easy day with nothing to do but drive to Whitehorse. We left late, about 9, and just loafed our way to Whitehorse. Lunch at Carmacks again on the way back. Check in to the Westmark and take it easy.

I suggest that we find a good pizza restaurant for whomever might want to come. I ask the two girls at the desk for a recommendation and get two different pizza joints – one that we would have to drive to and one that we can walk to. We opt for the one in walking distance. Planned departure is 6:00.

Down in the lobby at 6:00 and there’s already a group of 10 ready to go. Off to Bellacino’s which turns out to have maybe 4 tables. John goes in to see if we can effectively take over the restaurant. The short answer: sure. We now have 13 (soon to be 15) and they have some more space in the back of the restaurant.

We order some beer and pizzas and keep doing that until no one is eating or drinking any more. The pizzas are thin but very good. The beer is excellent. The group is excellent. A great night.

We walk back to the hotel and call it a night. A rest day with a 350 mile drive.

Obi-wan

We’re up early and ready to go at 6:30. The plan was to leave earlier but the lack of fuel availability and yesterday’s excitement have necessitated a later start. The first problem is fuel.

There’s a new gas station just a couple of blocks from the hotel and it has automatic pumps that take credit cards. Yay! In the car, it starts (a bigger Yay! Yes we’re that low on fuel), over to the pumps. Put in the card, follow the instructions on the little display on the brand new gas pump. Nothing. The flow never starts.

The display keeps asking to “remove the pump handle”, (check), “Select grade”, (check), “Lift switch”, (uncheck). What switch? I can not figure out where the switch is. There’s something that looks like a switch but it won’t move.

Maybe it’s frozen. Try another pump. No joy. And another. Still no joy. We give up and decide to wait until 7 for the office/convenience store to open in another 15 minutes. A local shows up but he’s having the same problem. This doesn’t make for an auspicious start.

We notice someone in the notice. Knock on the glass. A woman opens the door and we tell her the problem. She comes out to shows us dumb visitors how to use the pumps. Doesn’t work for her either. “Oh, that message about the switch doesn’t apply any more. The pumps should just flash the message and start pumping. These damned pumps have been giving us fits since they put them in.”

She gives up and goes back in the office to start the pump manually. We get our gas, pay, use the facilities for the last time until Eagle Plains and we’re on our way. Finally.

Back down the road to the the Dempster Highway intersection. Past last night’s scene of the crime. Damn, that’s a deep hole with a very long run in. Down the road a bit there’s another hole with a much shorter run in. I wasn’t the only victim last night. Take the left off the Klondike and on to the Dempster.

The first mile or so of the Dempster is paved but then the road turns to gravel. It’s quite smooth and we wouldn’t know it’s gravel if there hadn’t been a sign telling us.

Nice road. Nice forest. It’s daylight now so seeing wildlife won’t be an issue. Except for the occasional flock of snow white ptarmigans that suddenly popup.

The road slowly climbs in altitude and the forest gives way to scrub and then to barren ground. Without the trees, the wind is an issue. The road snakes around through valleys and over ridge lines. Now a headwind. Now a crosswind. Now a good ice surface. Now a bad washboard bump surface. Washboard and crosswind are not a good combination.

You do not want to stuff it here and crashing could be lethal even if you don’t get seriously hurt. Climbing out of a crashed car here with even minor injuries could be a very dangerous situation if you have to wait any length of time exposed to the elements waiting for help to arrive. Time to un-notch it a bit.

It’s about 250 miles to Eagle Plains which will take 4 to 5 hours assuming all goes well. There we are planning to get fuel and carry on to Inuvik. Tomorrow to Tuk. The bad news is that the wind is really picking up. The good news is that there’s very little blowing snow. A combination of high winds and blowing snow cause a phenomenon of a a low level whiteout.

The wind blows the snow right on the surface of the road for a height of just a couple of feet. Its like walking through a cloud of dry ice fog. The problem is that you can see just fine except for the road surface. It’s a very easy way to drive off the road.

On some of the ridges there are road edge markers to help you find the road but in most places there aren’t markers and if the situation gets bad enough you have to stop or move very slowly and stopping on this road is not a good idea since it’s really just a haul road for the oil industry in the MacKenzie River delta. Narrow road, big truck, small car – a bad combination.

But there haven’t been very many trucks. Actually, only one or 2 coming back down and none going north. A bad sign. The road maybe be closed between Eagle Plains and Inuvik. We should be seeing more southbound trucks.

We press on. About halfway to Eagle Plains, we stop at a rest area for a bio break and pull in behind #18 which has it’s hood up. Trouble?

The #18 Volvo is just checking it fluids and a few minutes after we stop they leave. We finish up and we leave. A minute or 2 later, we hear on the radio that the #18 is tuck in the snow. The call out their mile position. We’re only a few miles behind so get radio that we’re almost with them and we’ll assist getting them moving again.

Across a bridge and there they are on the left side of the road. We slow and stop. After all the help we got last night, it’s our time to repay. Get out the shovels.

The first order of business is to get out warning triangles to warn others that you are there. If you ended up here, anyone following you could end up here making a not very serious situation, very serious indeed.

I ask how they managed to get stuck on the wrong side of the road. “Oh, I was just crossing the bridge and as I got off the bridge back onto the snow, the car snap spun. We did a 360 and ended up here in the snow bank.” Yikes! “You did a 360 and stopped here?”

That’s very lucky. The car had come to a stop facing the right direction but right at the edge of the 10 foot drop from the elevated road surface to the tundra below. If she hadn’t spun, she would have gone off and the resulting crash wold have been very serious, possibly catastrophic. There’s a Mitsu on the road north of Eagle Plains that went off the road in a whiteout and endo-ed a couple of winter rallies ago. The car or, rather, it’s carcass, is still there.

We dig out the car and hook up the tow straps. A couple of tugs and the car is free. We repack the straps, shovels and triangles and get moving again. This won’t be the last car to need help before we get to Eagle Plain. There’ll be more.

Fuel is an issue on these sections. There isn’t any and you have to carry enough spare fuel with you to make sure you can get to the next fuel stop which, in this case is, EP. We have 10 gallons in jerry cans on the roof. In the ’08 rally, we ran out of fuel on the way south from Tuk and had to add fuel a mile short of EP in the cold and wind.

We’re almost at Eagle Plains when the car stumbles and then runs dry. Damn! The wind is howling. It’s snowing. Grrrr. Out. Get out the refueling gear. Siphon in 5 gallons from fuel with the trick siphon I found this year. (Much better than standing there trying to pour in the fuel through a very slow flow safety spout.) Repack. Drive the last mile into Eagle Plains. These Subaru’s have a perverse sense of humor.

The first stop is fuel. Always. And the jerry can first. While the attendant (yes, they even have a fuel attendant) is filling, I ask him about the road north. It’s closed due to blowing snow, high winds (100+kph) and crashed semis. That’s multiple crashed semis. We had heard on the trucker channel that the road was closed. I ask him when he thinks the road will open. “Maybe tomorrow. Probably not. It if does, it won’t be until late in the afternoon. But I don’t think it’ll open tomorrow, anayway.”

We had considered spending the night in EP and waiting til they opened the road to continue. After all, one of our main goals was to do the ice road on the MacKenzie to Tuk. But waiting 2 days isn’t really practical. The road could easily close again and we could be stuck in Inuvik for a couple of days . That would blow the rest of the rally and, conceivably, Barbara could miss her flight home.

We stop for lunch. All of us and completely overwhelm the one woman restaurant floor staff. A little over 50 people suddenly show up for lunch. While we’re waiting for lunch, the official word comes from Rally HQ. “We don’t know if the road will open but if you want to stay, we’ll pay for one night in EP, you can try for Tuk tomorrow and we’ll meet up again in Whitehorse in 2 days.”

A lot of if’s and, if the road opens that means a very, very long day to Tuk and then Whitehorse. It’s 250 miles to Inuvik, 300 round trip Inuvik-Tuk-Inuvik, 500 miles to Dawson City and a further 350 to Whitehorse. Hat’s 1,400 miles to Whitehorse. That means that the rally is effectively over if we stay. We can’t do 1,400 miles in one day on these roads. Even if we stop in Dawson City, it’s still over a 1,000 miles in a day. That’s just plain too dangerous to try. We decide to go back. It’s very disappointing but these things happen. Lunch. Back in the car and off to Dawson City. We leave 5 cars who opt to stay and try tomorrow (or whenever) for Tuk

It’s a leisurely drive back. Relatively speaking. The sun’s out and the weather has cleared but it’s still very windy. The driving is easy but I’m starting to get tired and that’s when really stupid things happen (see arrival in Dawson City post.) The ride is uneventful and that’s perfect.

We get to the hotel. Check it. Barbara camps out in the room for a rest and I go down to meet John in the bar. I have the maps that we’re using to plan our next trip together. He hasn’t seen them so we lay them out on a pool table and start plotting. More beer. Some food. And more beer.

Finally, the day catches up with me. Back to the room, Barbara’s already fallen asleep. I’m next.

Obi-wan

The edge of the road has a small berm left from the plows which is frozen into ice crystals. On the road side of that berm is another berm of soft snow. As we’ve been weaving along, we’ve been in and out of the soft snow berm and occasionally bumped the harder ice berm. This time, the car wandered and we ended up with the right front in the ice crystals and that pulled the car off the road into the ditch. That went on for over 300 feet while I tried to force the car back to the left.

The good news is that the 300 foot run through the frozen berm ate up most of the energy that the car had and we just slowly dropped into the ditch. The really good news was that there were no rocks, trees, culverts, stumps, other cars or deep water in the ditch. No harm – no foul. Also, no go.

Just a few minutes after we went in, cars #13 and #9 arrived to lend a hand and check on our physical condition. But, of course, first the photos for the wall of shame, ie. the Internet. After the check out and the photos, the verdict: Nice Stuff. (As in he stuffed the car in a ditch.)

A few minutes later, Jerry shows up to assess the situation and calls both Sweep 1 and Sweep 2. They’re about 30 minutes back, so we mill about for a while and then start digging the snow out from the back of the car so that Sweep can pull us back up to the road. More milling about.

An hour goes by and, Colin and Ramona have put Barbara in the car with them. After a while longer, still no Sweep, so Colin leaves for the hotel in Dawson City. Car 13 makes some room and I climb in with them. It’s gotten dark. It’s cold. There’s no traffic.

Sweep 1 and Sweep 2 finally show up. They get out of the trucks to assess the situation. I had Kevin the $10 for the tug. (Canadian this time – it’s worth more and the stuff is a lot harder this time.)

Plan A: Kevin gets out a to strap and we hook it to my tow strap and then to a tow hook on his truck. We stand back. He tightens the slack on the straps, revs the engine, lets out the clutch and nothing. The truck starts slipping on the snow and the Subie just sits there absolutely immobile. Hmmm.

Plan A (revised): Joe Gardiner, Sweep 2, pulls in behind Kevin and hooks his tow strap to Kevin and on command, they both pull. Joe pulling Kevin. Kevin pulling the Subie. Nothing. Not a budge.

Plan B: Joe stays connected to Kevin. Kevin takes off the tow strap and connects his winch cable to my tow strap. We stand back. The winch pulls. The cable stretches. Nothing.

Plan C: We start digging in earnest. The current theory is that the snow is pulling so much suction that we can’t break the car loose. Five of us jump in and start digging around the car. In a few minutes, the car is pretty much exposed. Kevin tightens the winch. Nothing.

Plan D: We discuss whether we have enough tow straps to anchor Joe’s truck on a nearby telephone pole, anchor Kevin with Joe, etc. We discard that idea: we’ll have to block the road and maybe damage the pole. More digging.

This time, the Subie finally moves. Not far but it moves. It’s a long way from out and the wheels aren’t rolling. The car is just surfing on the snow.

Plan D (revised): More digging. The car’s left wheels finally make contact with the ground and the cars actually starts to roll. A few more minutes and the car is back on the road. I get in start it and drive it a few feet down the road to check it out. Everything seems to be pointed in the right direction.

We disconnect the straps and winch. Dig the snow out of the radiator so the engine doesn’t overheat. We try to get the hood up to get snow out of the engine bay bu the release cable is frozen. We’ll wait for it to thaw rather than break it.

We gather up everything and start on to Dawson City about three hours after we went off the road. Now it’s about 8:00 and the gas station is long closed. Since I’m almost out of fuel, car 13 stays back with me to shepherd me to the hotel.

We’re driving on a fairly twisty bit of road and I keep losing 13′s tail lights but they keep popping out through the snow. He’s starting to step it out and I keep going fast enough to keep him in sight but slow enough to conserve fuel. Then he makes a right turn off the main road.

This seems odd. I don’t remember this way into Dawson. But I keep following the taillights up the hill into a residential area. The tail lights turn into a driveway and as it turns, I see that I”ve been following a mini-van not a Forester. Turn around. Retrace. Coast down the hill. I’m not going to run out of fuel.

I finally find the hotel. Barbara’s waiting in the bar with the rest of the rally. Quick order some food the kitchen’s almost closed. Get some beer. Give the after action report to those interested. Up to the room. Bed.

What a day and we haven’t even started the Dempster.

Obi-wan