Subiesport Magazine - April/May 2008 - (Page 62)

ALCAN 5000 there, called the Blackwater. It’s 90 miles of snow and ice that runs over one-lane bridges, along beautiful lakes, and through the deep north woods. For many of the competitors, it’s their first taste of sideways driving through the snow at speed. “You just survive the first four days of the rally, and then you get to the fun part,” Hightower advised us. The fun part, as Hightower puts it, starts when you get north of Whitehorse. The first fun day of the Alcan starts with an ice race on frozen Schwatka Lake, just outside of town. You can’t bring special rubber for this contest — you’ve got to run on the street-legal ice and snow tires that have just carried you over 1500 miles to get here. Hilarity ensues on the frozen race course as each car makes its run. Overcooking a corner is a spectacular but ultimately harmless exercise, so drivers give it all they’ve got. Most try and fail to achieve the fully sideways, opposite lock driving style they’ve seen on YouTube, and a couple of cars require the service trucks to drag their bent-up carcasses off of the four-foot snow banks. Oh, did I say harmless? Well, let’s revise that a bit (with apologies to Douglas Adams) to “mostly-harmless.” There’s a little bent sheet metal and a few headlights that don’t quite point true after we’re done. In the end, it comes down to Eklund’s Forester XT vs. the 2004 WRX wagon of Canadians Jennifer Daly, Gordon Ryall, and August Ustare for fast time, and Ryall took the prize (well, the bragging rights) for the fastest lap. After the races, the rally heads out towards Dawson City — time to get far enough North that you can make the long run up to Inuvik and Tuk. As we pack up and head for the Klondike, Hightower has one more piece of wisdom to impart: “What happens north of 60 stays north of 60.” The El Dorado Hotel in Dawson City (population: not many) beats the hell out of any place called the El Dorado anywhere else on Earth. For one thing, they’ll serve your dinner in the bar, which is not unusual, but it’s a good dinner and you’re hungry when you get there. If your drink of choice isn’t scrawled on the giant chalkboard, on which is written every drink they know how to make, they’ll take instructions. If it’s any good, your drink could end up on the chalkboard, too. Stories abound at the El Dorado — the most famous is the tall tale that Baron Von Richthofen (grandson of the legendary pilot of the same name) bedded the barmaid and wore her apron to breakfast the next day as a trophy. But Dawson is just a jumping off place for the real adventure. The day that you cross the Arctic Circle begins well before dawn. If you don’t make it out of Dawson and onto the Dempster Highway by 8:00 a.m., you probably won’t make it to Inuvik, and there’s little but caribou turds along the way. As we’re getting ready for the trip to the circle, several experienced competitors bless us with the admonition, “Don’t pass gas.” Far from an unwelcome intrusion into our admittedly lax hygiene standards, this is a deadly se- 62 MAY 2008

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Subiesport Magazine - April/May 2008

Subiesport Magazine - April/May 2008 Contents Travis Geny Letters Readers' Rides Subaru News Wicked in White Pink Rules Harman Motive Nouveau Tuning the 2008 STI 2008 Rally Guide Alcan 5000 Rally Alcan Unleashed WRC Rally Monte Carlo WRC Rally Sweden WRC Rally Mexico 100 Acre Wood Kumakubo! D1 Drifting Where to Buy Subiesport 2008 Impreza WRX 2007 Legacy GT 1993 Impreza Wagon Fueled Up Ad Directory Spotted!

Subiesport Magazine - April/May 2008

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