Quick Day 4 Update – Ice Racing and We Won Day 3!

Writing this from beautiful Whitehorse, Yukon Territories where it’s easily above +5C.

We just came back from a bout of Ice Racing on the lake, where Kristin had her first taste of competitive driving on polished ice. Each team was allowed 4 runs, but only 2 per driver so Kristin had nothing to loose. It took a bit of convincing but what a better place to learn to drive like this where there are lots of people to tow you out. She did great and we both had a lot of fun.

They also posted the scores from yesterday, and we had the best time in our class (passenger cars with no rally computers)! We even had better times than some folks -with- computers. I doubt we’ll have enough TSD miles to be competitive for the overall event, but our main goal was to have fun, and improve – so I think we’re doing just that.

We’re just checking out of the hotel and heading for Dawson, so will post some pics and another update later tonight.

– Stevan and Kristin

Alcan – Day 3

Day 3 in the bag, more successes for Team Arychuk and more firsts for Kristin.

This was a very strenuous day, with over 800 miles (!!!) of driving on some pretty nasty ice-covered roads from New Hazelton all the way up to Whitehorse in the Yukon Territories. This is the furthest north I have ever been, and obviously the same for Kristin.

Due to the extremely long day, we were on the road by 6:30am, again after doing TSD math until after midnight. We were awoken by the diesel truck from our buddy team #17 Bill and Doug being warmed up, and jumped out of bed thinking we slept in and ran out into the -10 weather pretty much in our PJ’s with all our gear. We actually were ok, and wanted to get an early start so we could detour out to Bear Glacier on the way to Hyder Alaska, adding another 60miles to our already planned 750miles for the day.

We headed north on Hwy 37, and when we got to the turn-off for Hyder, we took a 16-mile detour down the road with Bill and Doug and the Sirius Rally team to see Bear Glacier, which was totally worth it:

We didn’t have too much time to sight-see, and it was the coldest we’ve felt yet, but we’d like to come back sometime and see Hyder, Alaska.

We pressed on another 300 miles to Dease Lake, where our first and only TSD of the day was to take place. It was an absolutely incredible day, quite mild and clear as could be. Here’s a picture of the road and the general area we were in:

Now of course the day couldn’t be without drama, which reared it’s ugly head in the form of the only gas station within 400 miles of New Hazelton and Dease Lake was frozen and didn’t work. This is exactly the reason why we are carrying spare fuel, which we ended up using and made it without further incident.

We made it to Dease Lake and had a quick lunch, and completed our TSD in what we believe is very good time, although scores aren’t posted yet. Immediately afterwards we saw a couple cars pulled over to the side, and upon stopping to ‘help’ we were barraged with snowballs from an army of about 5 other teams. Since Stevan grew up in Canada he has some serious snow-ball fighting experience, so the strategy was changed to focus all of the energy on the rally officials, sweep and scoring as they drove by. In retrospect this may not have been the smartest move, and I won’t at all be surprised if all the teams involved ended up getting the max penalty for that TSD 🙂 They started warning the rest of the organizers about a ‘gang of hoodlums throwing snowballs’, but it doesn’t really matter when you have 15 people throwing an army of 50 pre-made snowballs at a moving car. Didn’t get pictures of this, but Kristin got some wicked HD video.

We then continued another 200 miles north, exiting BC into the Yukon territories. The rest of the day was pretty uneventful, but after 750 miles, and almost running out of gas (again), Stevan was completely burnt and had Kristin take us into the final 100mile leg in Whitehorse. Considering Kristin has only -seen- snow a handful of times, driving the rally car on the ice-covered Alaskan highway for the first time was pretty impressive and she did great.

Here’s a picture coming into the Yukon:

We’re writing this from Whitehorse, where it’s a pleasant -2C after 3+ weeks of -40C. We’re doing a small off-road ice-race tomorrow, which is actually a 2mile rally stage usually used by snowmobiles. This is as close to performance rally as you can get, with only 1 person in the car and helmets required. It should be a TON of fun. After that we head up to Dawson to get ready for the big push on the infamous Dempster highway and the ice road to Tuktoyuktuk.

Thanks SO MUCH for all the comments! It’s what keeps us going and is the first thing we read when we check into the hotel.

– Stevan & Kristin

Alcan – Day 2

Day 2 of the 2008 Alcan complete! Another full day with no lack of excitement. We essentially got to do 3 types of rally today- TSD, performance/stage (sorta), and gumball (sorta).

We started out this morning in Quesnel at a mild -1C. We were all prepared for some ice racing, but they weren’t able to plow the racetrack so it was replaced with another TSD stage called “11%” from a previous here. Here’s a picture of Kristin and the car before we departed in the morning.

I also noticed that there was an exhaust leak, and upon trying to tighten it up I sheared off the bolt. Obviously there was some minor damage from the incident with the snow bank in WL last night, but nothing a metal zip-tie couldn’t bandaid until we could find a hardware store.

Because the 11% grade TSD was last minute, the instructions and mileage were from a previous Alcan so were anything but accurate. We were up until 2am doing the calculations for the day’s TSD’s, and quickly realized in the first one we still had some issues to work out. We managed to keep our cool, still have fun, and complete the TSD although still significantly off our ideal time. It can take a couple stages/days to work through the calcs and communication issues, and by the end of the day things were getting much better. Post the 11% TSD we made a pilgrimage stop at Tim Hortons for donuts and coffee, and headed over to West Quesnel for the Blackwater TSD and transit. We also found a hardware store to get some parts to fix the exhaust.

Now the Blackwater has some serious history with the Alcan, and is essentially a 150mi backroad from Quesnel to Vanderhoof (bypassing Prince George). It can be pretty gnarly, and has eaten many cars in the past. The TSD itself was pretty uneventful, and again we quickly realized we were off our calcs as the next car behind us was pretty close. At least we were perfectly wrong (if that makes sense), but still had some work to do. After the TSD we were cleared for the 150mi Blackwater transit to Vanderhoof, which had to be confirmed by the workers as the last 20mi can be really bad, and if you have to turn around there is a good chance you’ll run out of gas. Now this road was -fun-!!! Kristin got her first taste of a pseudo performance/stage rally, as it was a pretty fast 100% snow covered road that we more or less had exclusive access on. All the drivers got to ‘play’, and get some serious experience with limited traction winter driving. We had a pretty close call coming in too hot into a 90-degree right over a bridge, and the car was a bit wide and the rear drivers side bumped the snow bank on the bridge which tossed us right back in line. Others had various issues as well, including this pic below (looks like my car but isn’t); our buddy crew #18 Doug and Bill quickly towed them out and our convoy of about 10 cars was back on the snow covered roads.

About 70 miles into the road, there was a -really- nasty sweeping right into left going downhill, that was sheer ice. It had already claimed a number of cars before us which we heard on the radio, and as soon as we went into the 2nd turn the car completely lost grip and we were more or less sliding out of control. Thankfully the training I received at Team O’Neil kicked in and a short tap on the acceleration and minimal steering and we managed to get things under control albeit nearly missing the 3 cars parked off to the left who weren’t as lucky. We heard lots of chaos on the radio from the cars after us, including the sweep crew of the rally (not sure who would tow -them- out!).

When we hit Vanderhoof we topped off with gas, and thought we only had 5 miles to goto the next TSD. After stopping for a quick lunch, we got in the car and realized we had about 20min to go ~30 miles. I won’t get into specifics due to incriminating evidence, but let’s just say it was a gumball style rally, and yes – we made it on time (actually with time to spare). Don’t think Kristin had ever been that fast in the Subbie before, so it was again another ‘first’.

The last TSD we -finally- got our shit together and did exceptionally well and only got 23 points (seconds off) for the entire ~20mile TSD. Considering we pretty much had 200+ points on the other stages, we were happy and did much better than many of our competition.

After that TSD we stopped for a complimentary lunch in Burns Lake, where one of the competitors was friends with the owner of this fantastic healthy food cafe. What a great little place with incredible home made healthy food, which was a total surprise in a small town like that. Stevan took advantage of the daylight to fix the exhaust, and then we were on our way for the last transit of the day. We made it to New Hazelton around 8pm, checked in, had another drivers meeting to prepare for tomorrow, and are now back in our room recovering and preparing for our MARATHON day tomorrow.

Tomorrow is an 800mile day from New Hazelton to Whitehorse, with a hopeful photo-op at Bear Glacier. Considering how tired we are after the past 2 days at about ~450 miles each day, I’m having a hard time thinking about what tomorrow will be like. We’re getting an early start at about 6:30 tomorrow to try and drive in as much daylight as possible.

Thats all for now. We really appreciate all the comments from friends and family.

– Kristin and Stevan

Alcan – Day 1

Well we had quite the first day on our Alcan 2008 experience!

We traveled almost 500 miles from Seattle to Quesnel, crossed the border into Canada, helped out an RCMP officer (good karma), completed 2 TSD rallies, and then stuffed the car into a snowbank.

We got under way early this morning and had an official departure from Kirkland with all 24 cars in the rally. It was very cool to see all the cars in the event ready for some extreme winter action. After about a 60mile transit up past Mount Vernon, we did the first TSD section of the rally near Sumas. TSD = Time Speed Distance, and is a competitive portion of the event based on accuracy of being at a certain point at a certain time; points are given for every second you are off perfect time, and the checkpoints are hidden so you essentially are always trying to maintain perfect time.  We were probably too aggressive in our math last night, trying to calculate down to every 10th of a mile, and just had too much information.  That caused us to make one wrong turn, so we probably didn’t have a competitive time for that TSD.

After the 1st TSD we crossed the border into Canada at Sumas, which was pretty uneventful (other cars however were not as lucky and were significantly delayed by Customs).  Stopped in Hope for lunch, and then saw someone off to the side of the road needing some assistance with a broken rim outside Yale.  There was a lot of fallen rocks on Hwy1 up to Cache Creek, and this family had hit a basketball sized one and completely destroyed the rim & tire on their SUV.  As Doug and Bill (our buddy car #18) were carrying a full-sized jack, we stopped to help them out.   Turns out he was an off-duty RCMP officer from Williams Lake of all places, so said we could use his name if we got into any trouble.

We then continued onto Williams Lake for the 2nd and last TSD of the day before ending in Quesnel.  Now I have mixed feelings about ‘The Puddle’, as I grew up there when I was a teenager.  Despite the fact I have MANY good friends from WL, the town itself still left something to be desired.  So of course I was talking shit about WL all day, and about 3/4 of the way through the TSD near Soda Creek I stuffed the car into a snowbank.  We were really focused on getting our time calculations more accurate, and I was paying more attention to the GPS and odometer and not the road, and when I looked up I saw a giant caution sign with a right hand arrow at the end of a downhill acute right turn.  It was pretty minor all in all, didn’t hurt anything on the car, and -almost- was able to get out of it ourselves.  Team Mitsubishi Car #21 stopped, and Kristin already had our emergency triangle and tow-rope ready, so they quickly yanked us out and we were on our way.  Kristin was giggling the entire time, yelling ‘my first stuff into a snowbank!’ so it was good fun, despite the face we blew that TSD as well.

It’s been a long day but we are having a blast and can’t wait to get started tomorrow. Didn’t have time for many pics today, but we got some good HD video. Need to run as we owe the team from Car #21 some beer for towing us out of the snow bank.

Rally on!

– Stevan and Kristin

Alcan – Day 0

So this is it! This morning we got up bright and early to pack up the car and take it up to Kirkland, WA (Seattle) to complete registration, have the car technically inspected (passed!), and meet the other competitors and organizers of the event. No issues with the tech inspection, and overall registration went smoothly.

It was great to see so many familiar faces from the rally community, and it reminds us of why we really do these events. We saw folks who remembered us from the JAOS Adventure Rally we competed in 6 years ago in the grand canyon! We also of course saw many friends from the Pacific Northwest Rally community, and was great to make new friends with some of the other competitors who came from as far away as Idaho, South Carolina, Ontario and California.

Here’s a picture of the car in it’s final state after all preparation, sponsor and event decals, and loaded up gear (it was getting late and we were loosing light, hence the dark picture):

Tomorrow the event officially begins, with a whopper ~500 mile leg from Kirkland to Quesnel, BC, which includes 2 TSD rally sections, and crossing customs as we enter Canada at Sumas/Abbotsford. All in all we’re feeling good, the car is sorted, we’re tired from a hectic week of preparation but excited for the adventure ahead.

Map/Route via Google Earth Flyover

The folks over at TeamD created a very cool flyover of the Alcan 5000 route in Google Earth. I was playing around with this myself and found their excellent video which does pretty much what I wanted, so here it is. It should give you a good idea of the route we’re taking:

If any of you have Google Earth and want check out the route yourself, let me know and I’ll post the .kml file.

– Stevan

Extreme Winter Car Preparation Notes

The car is getting sorted this week, with a lot of help from sponsors DJM and Barrett from AllWheelsDriven.  We had the car at the shop earlier this week to install some of the winter-specific equipment, change all fluids, and wire up the lights.

Barrett sent over a nice car-package of Redline fluids, so we won’t have to  worry about an oil change for over 5,000miles.  We’re using Redline 5W-30 in the engine, Redline MTL90 in the transmission, and Redline 75W-90 in the rear diff.  All were changed and good to go.  The coolant system got a flush as we had to drain it to install the block heater, and also installed a silicon oil pan heater, and battery blanket.  That’s 3 systems which will be heated during the evenings in the arctic (coolant, oil and battery), which assumes we can find a place to plug in each night.

Another significant amount of time has been spent on the electrical system.  The redtop Optima battery was poached from rally car #464,  I got an upgraded higher output alternator from a Japanese version of my car (will take the stock as a spare), extra cables run for computers, HAM radios, and of course the 1500watt inverter under Kristin’s seat which should not only keep her warm from it’s heat output, but enough juice to power a coffee maker while we are driving!  That badboy required 4-guage cable direct from the battery, which is about the same diameter as my pinky finger.  MikeP had a good suggestion which was to use #4 welding cable instead, which was cheaper and extremely flexible.  Attached is a pic showing the current work-in-progress of the electrical system.

– Stevan

Rally Lights and the Art of Avoiding Moose

A good lighting setup is essential for an event like this, since we’re traveling to arctic Canada, in the Winter, so it will probably be dark more than it will be light (Canadark).

In addition to the stock lighting setup in the Subaru WRX, I wanted to add some auxiliary lighting. I was going to use the Hella lights from the Rally car, but Dave from DoubleJMotorwerks was nice enough to lend me his big-assed Hella lights (thanks again Dave!), and also helped me make-up a quick light bar. I call these lights “See’um Moose in the Ditch Lights”, because they are actually fog lights so they have an incredibly wide throw, but are bright enough to easily be used as aux driving lights. Joey and I initially had some issues wiring up the lights, as Japanese cars use a “negative switched ground” setup for the headlights. We originally looked at the specific instructions for negative ground, but quickly dismissed them and wire them the way we usually do. The lights actually worked as designed (only on when High Beams are on), but they would also randomly turn on when I started the car, or put on the e-brake. This proved bad as they run -hot-, so if they are on and I don’t notice and leave the protective covers on, they begin to melt. Anyways, thanks to this diagram from Susquehana Motorsports, it’s wired properly now.

Besides the extra lights on the custom light bar, the fog lights have been improved with new Hella H3 YELLOW bulbs, and YELLOW protective film. Yellow should prove a much better setup for driving in blizzard conditions due to the difference in color and longer wavelength. All the lights on the car have protective 3M covering, so if they get hit by a rock, or a snowbank, they will hopefully survive.

Kristin and I went for a test drive to check out and align the lights. Not quite HID, but damn – that’s a lot of light! The point of all of this is that we want to be able to see those moose before hitting them. Kristin found a picture of an Alaskan Moose to give you an idea of what we might run into.

– Stevan

How cold can it get?

So we’ve been tossing around temperatures like ‘minus 50’ as we’ve been telling people about this trip, but we didn’t actually think it would get -that- cold. Here’s the current forecast for Dawson, in the Yukon (one of the places we’ll be staying):

http://weatheroffice.gc.ca/forecast/city_e.html?yk-6&unit=i

Thats right. -52C. I think that’s about -49F for US folks, so I guess one upside is not having to do temperature conversions when it gets that ridiculous.

Besides the temperature, we’re noticing massive road closures in Oregon, Washington, and throughout BC due to the massive amounts of snow.  We picked an interesting year to goto the arctic!

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– Stevan