TeamD Adventures

Day 8 is the home stretch to the finish of the Alcan Winter Rally. There were only two timed sections today and there will be two tomorrow. Compared with the early days of the rally there is little opportunity to regain losses. But the chance still exists to make your score way worse.

At this point, going in to day 9, TeamD stands as follows: Eric and Steve in BMW 325iX #7 are 2nd in class I and 5th overall. Jim and Dan in their Subaru WRX are 3rd in class I and 8th overall. Rob and Nick driving the Mazda 323 GTX are 3rd in class III and 9th overall. Wish us luck on Day 9, the final day of the Alcan Winter Rally.

Full scores and a little more discussion follows…
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We are at the end of Day 7 of the Alcan Winter Rally. We spent days five and six testing the endurance of ourselves and our vehicles by driving North from Dawson City 500 miles to Inuvik. After turning North at the junction onto the Dempster Highway it is about 230 miles of completely uninhabited snow covered valleys, hills and mountains until you reach Eagle Plains, a lone self-sufficient outpost that provides the only gas on this road. Leaving Eagle Plains going North it’s another 250 miles to reach Inuvik. You don’t want trouble on that road.
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Jim and Dan’s WRX lost alternator power a scant 13 miles up the Dempster highway dashing their hopes of piloting it to the Arctic Ocean. Thankfully it chose that point only 13 miles of the 500 mile drive. The full team returned to Dawson City, we parked the WRX at the El Dorado Hotel and put Dan and Jim into the Mazda 323 and BMW 325iX. We will haul Dan and Jim North to complete the mission. We are two hours behind schedule and are back on the road to Inuvik. More on events when we arrive in Inuvik tonight.

After three and a half rally days of temperatures around 40F the cold Alcan Rally weather finally arrived today. We have ice and snow at 3 degrees farhenheit and fresh scores on hand! Today we had only one TSD section and our second ice race but changes were dramatic. First, the TeamD news of course…
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Hello, Eric here reporting on day 3. We overslept this morning. Steve and I got up at 5:25, about an hour later than planned and only 35 minutes before our scheduled start time. The day started off bad for us, the famous Alcan hillclimb was about three miles into the first timed TSD section. It looked fine until we found ourselves behind a semi truck with long low-boy trailer and had to follow it through the three switchbacks of the hillclimb. We took a 35 point penalty at the top of the climb. I was not happy. But if you drive for 16 hours and put about 800 miles in, those problems become distant memories.

TeamD slipped a bit today. Eric and Steve’s hillclimb fun moved them back to second in class. They are 4.5 points behind first in class. They slipped from 5th to 7th place. Dan got stuck with some of their major points from yesterday, they are still third in class and 9th overall. Nick and Rob are hanging in there, third in their class and 10th overall.

Read on for more details and full standings…
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