Day 8 Map

Today’s Temperatures
0F at Whitehorse and on Schwatka lake, and then around 32F up at Liard.

Into the wild
Sunday: another early morning, out on the road for an 8AM TSD up Long Lake in Whitehorse. This is the 2nd time we’ve run Long Lake on this rally and R.Dale and I were at “maximum attack”. The stage is very slippery with icy and snowy corners but relatively slow speeds. The challenge is keeping the car exactly on time at, for example, 20 MPH. It turns out we finished the day ahead of all the other cars with only a 1 second penalty point (which depending on what we score on the following 2 days could be dropped).

The ice race was out at Schwatka Lake with brutally cold conditions (0F or below, snowing lightly). The track had been used by the motorcycle ice racing club so the ice surface was very polished and slick. We knew we had to set two good times and couldn’t afford any snowbank excursions – R.Dale set the fastest and slowest times for our car, while my times were right in between his times.

R.Dale on the ice:

From Whitehorse we had a long transit to Liard Hot Springs, where we are staying in a rustic but comfortable lodge at the hot springs, with no internet; therefore you are reading this Monday night or later. Their dinner service was great and good humoured and all the rallyists appreciated it. The other half of the cars are bunking about 30 miles down the road.

We really hadn’t seen a lot of wild life so far but today made up for that in spades. We saw at least 30 buffalo, including two that were lying down and dozing in the snow, as well as a frisky cow moose that galloped across the road in front of us and then loped off into the trees. There was also a buffalo that was right at R.Dale’s window looking in.

The new highlight of the trip, which I now rank above Eagle Plains and the ice road to Tuk, was swimming in Liard Hot Springs at night. I had been to the springs in 2004 but didn’t get in (I think I was worried about getting sick due to the temperature differential), but this time I made up for that and after dinner we ventured down to the springs at about 8:00PM.

It is about a ½ mile walk in the dark from the lodge to the springs. R.Dale and I walked down the wooden snow covered walkway in the park, when my headlamp lit up two yellow eyes right in front of us. A large dog/wolf growled and barked at us. We couldn’t see anyone else. We stood our ground, but we were both thinking “do wolves bark?” This animal was large enough to be a very serious threat, but we knew turning and running would be a signal that we were dinner.

The dog kept barking until we finally saw a flashlight beam, and a local man came up and said “the dog doesn’t like flashlights” and then the dog (a husky mix) came up and visited us and was pretty friendly. Why he didn’t call the dog off earlier we don’t know but we were somewhere between concerned and petrified until he showed up!

The hot springs were fantastic! The pools are about 3 ft deep with cold water running into them but at least as warm as a hot tub and possibly hotter in places. We quickly got used to the sulphur smell – a lot like the tepid baths in New Zealand. Benches are placed in the water at various locations in the pools. With the night sky above us, trees and snow around us and gathered with friends from Team Mitsubishi Alcan, Sirius Rally Team and our fellow Arctic Challenger crew, it was a magic and relaxing location we will never forget.

Scores
We are closing in on Car 1, though not as fast as we hoped. We made up 2 points today on the Long Lake TSDs. But even though we put 4.6 seconds on them at the ice race, we both got “maxed” by Gordo in Car 17, meaning we instead took 10 points each.

However, we did draw 5 points ahead of Car 10, helping us keep hold of 2nd place overall.

Here are the top 4 overall:

Glenn