Glenn - Although the 'official' stories have not yet surfaced, I feel like devoting a few bytes to it, which might stir some comment from the other entrants.

The announcement said it would predominantly be a gravel rally.....I think there was more snow than TBird 2000 perhaps, though not as much as Tbird 99, which ended with most of the cars stuck up the side of a mountain on the last stage! (we were ahead of the 2WD cars..... and didn't get stuck).

Paul Westwick & co put on really good events (we've been to three) and this was no exception. Quick scoring and results, excellent instructions and great BC roads.

Saturday was pretty scary. At the bar the night before, Paul told us that the 3rd stage of Saturday was the infamous 1st stage of TBird 99. That gave me immediate pause to reflect on how much trouble we had in the really loose, deep powder on that stage. Then he said the first two stages of Totem had even more fresh snow...

Speaking of the bar, it seems that all 6 of the good looking women in Canada (sorry) had congregated there to dance to some very loud 70's disco music, and then flash themselves at the DJ. Whatever, eh?!

I went down to the car early to start it and get the computer hooked up. Trusty Rat Shack thermometer showed 11 F outside the car, 14 F inside. Hmm. Would you believe Alcan 2000.5? It had warmed up to 19 F by the first car out.

Our first hint that the Totem gods were smiling on us came in the middle of the first stage.

Richard called "turn right at the triangle shaped intersection onto something Rd...." of course, being the dumb driver, I started trying to match the roads to his description rather than turning the damn car. Richard says "did you see the sign?". I said "oh yeah, in my mirror". Richard nods. I thought it was a SOR (sign on R) not TURN RIGHT at SOR. Dumb drivers. Even after that exchange, we hadn't fully communicated what had transpired.... and I hadn't turned. Suggestion: acknowledge your turns (e.g. "turning right onto blahblah Rd").

So we are a few km up the road and come across a large herd of cattle heading towards us. Being the impatient/scared type I thought it important to assert my ownership of the road to the cows, with a few well placed blasts of the 118dBA Hella Supertones. Boy, did those cows scatter! Unfortunately the cowboy driving them (who I didn't see) didn't seem to be as impressed with my cattle driving skills....

I lowered my window and apologised (the cows seemed to recover) and we continued.

After another few km we decided the instructions didn't seem to match and traced back to the fact we hadn't taken the turn. Navigator insists he was too buried in his notes to notice we didn't turn.....

We head back.... of course running into the same herd of cows, and the Canadian cowboy atop his magnificent horse, and his (what I think were) Australian cattle dogs (hey I'm from Brisbane, not Broken Hill).

After a suitable pause, he herds the cows off the road and we wave and press on.

We take the left (the right we missed) and head up the hill. The driver, probably still trying to figure out what type of dogs they were, slowly slides the trust Subaru steed into a little ditch on the left of the road. Not enough to be high centered but definitely stuck (without a rear LSD).

Left side of the car are pressed against the snow covered bank (how thick is that snow? Are there any trees or rocks or metal bars inside it?)

Richard does triangle duty, and though we're equipped with plenty of _working_ shovels following our TBird 2000 stuff, I elect to try to rock the car out. Going backwards seems to help, even though the car stalls twice.

Finally heading back (just shown of a small tree and medium sized pit) with left hand down pops the front out enough to get forward traction and we're off.

Given our ~25km or so detour, and our stuff, I'm expecting to be _after_ the sweep truck, but we get to the end of the stage (no controls!!!) and then to the end of the next transit to find cars 1-5 (we're car 6) there, but no one else.

"Other cars were stuck earlier in the stage, 30 minute delay for the rest of the day!". Hallelujah! No points, no time to make up. This was truly some Totem sized LUCK.

So Saturday night we're coming down a dark and snowy hill, and I brake, the ABS goes crazy - note that this is not normal on snow for a Subaru with Hakkas, which is why I leave the ABS enabled... it provides a good traction alert function.

Then I realize what is going on - glare ice down the hill and through the corner. But this is not your normal glare ice, this stuff I think was silicon coated, and the brakes were certainly not helping the situation, so I started the gentle sideways flick to hopefully bleed some speed off and head away from the black pit over the edge.

The right is followed by a left and we fishtail within inches of each edge. This and the next corner were quite a sphincter pucker test. Had we been carrying a little more speed into the corner and we would have been down in the black pit.

Up the icy straight we see a local's truck but think nothing of it, not knowing that Russ Kraushaar and co (car #1) had already gone into said black pit, their fall having been stopped by a tree....

From the accounts of the cars ahead of us, they had already (in 5 minutes!) found a local and organized a lift into town. Russ and his dad were thankfully unharmed but the car was far from the road. Hopefully Russ will post some more details (including recovery - how do you bring a totalled car back into the US?), although to be honest that whole section and the thought of a car going off that road gave me nightmares!

Saturday night had us in the (undeserved) outright lead --- though to even contemplate winning this event at that stage would put too much of a hoodoo on it - after all, it only takes one stuff or mistake to lose a rally (and we'd already had one!). I almost didn't put the Nokian Tyre and Grand Canyon Tours Rally contingency decals on the car Friday – why bother, I thought!?

Sunday's driving was much more "pleasantly" challenging (as opposed to the _other_ kind of challenging), with many (if not all) stages being from TBird 99. We even saw gravel roads (without snow) in a couple of places.

We thought we were doing "pretty well", until we came down to a right turn with a control in plain site. We had been on time but had lost 5 or 6 seconds in the few turns before the downhill (nice control placement!). It wasn't worth a total stuff for a few points at that control, so we went through.

The last control was at a tunnel.... although there was Bill (I think) waving us to slow down. Some woman with dogs in the tunnel!!! We were at 6,000 RPM in 2nd gear at the time, but obediently slowed down, assuming the control would be tossed (it was).

Sitting next to R.Dale at the awards - I was lamenting not being granted spousal permission to enter Alcan 2000, and he remarked that the driving on Totem 2000 was more challenging than the conditions on Alcan. That certainly made me feel good.

The competition in Unlimited was very close. An impressive drive from the Sorems took Paper (and we assume PCC too; winning wasn't enough for us to catch up, though we were hoping the Tabor clan would win paper :). Another impressive drive was from the novices in the Focus ZX3 (how did they get that thing up the hills?). I should note that Totem was our first win together, so that was also nice.

After our first huge mistake and stuff on Saturday, we almost headed south. So Sunday night, I called to tell my four year old daughter we had won: "you DID?!" she said. On the kids show "Blues Clues" one of the episodes is themed "don't give up, just go on". When I told her we didn't give up, she said "just go on!". So I think that is now my rally motto.

One final obligatory plug : Russ asked when I was going to get a decent Timewise setup, instead of my "homebrew hackerware" laptop software. Why hadn't we won any events with it? My answer, of course, was : driver error, navigator error. The timing part is easy. At least, that's what I think.

Glenn

Andy - I'm not sure if it was my attitude (screw the CASTs, the car's going home in one piece) my tires (Bridgestone Blizzaks) or being car #19, but I didn't find the snow that challenging.  I'm betting it was the car #19 thing.

I found high pucker factor on the last regularity of each day.  Downhill into Kelowna on the icy pavement, and uphill with  magnificent exposure on the right for the whole section.  As for the section where car #1's mis-adventure took place (OK Falls regularity?)  I don't remember it.  Maybe a mental block because it was so scary?  Maybe it wasn't scary by the time I got there 18 cars later.

How about Big White!?!  I almost drove that regularity twice - it was so much fun!

Andy

PS - You know you're off course when:  The CAST says 40mph and the  water bars are a foot deep.

Mark - No, that means you are in Canada and on course!!  We caught air on many different bumps, cattlegaurds, etc.  Love those roads AND the snow!!

Mark, Car #10

Shades of the Alcan as we picked up a rock chip on the trip into Merritt and then Saturday morning after a 15-degree night it began to run. It is now about a foot long. The same thing happened at the start of the Alcan last February. This gravel rally was to turn into an ice and snow event. Luckily we had put on the studs in Portland.

The first regularity was a quite challenging run with an acute left turn in the middle. As we approached the turn we watched John Kisela rip through the intersection apparently having missed the left. After horsing the car around the turn we witnessed John’s Subaru fish tailing such that we saw clearly each side of the car. After that John drove with much more reserve. The leg was deleted because of several other offs that required extraction.

The second regularity was a fast slippery sob in which we saw snow coming over the windscreen several times. Once, it covered the whole window meaning I was four wheels off. Somehow we pressed on and eventually caught up with Mark Nolte who was pussy footing through the woods. I found this amazing since he was two cars in front of us. Soon just after passing the obvious location for a control, Mark’s brake lights came on and he came to a stop nose to nose with the control worker’s car. It seems that they had been unable to get into position before the first cars had come through, so there would be no score for this leg. Since we had fallen 6-7 behind following Mark, we were glad the control was not there. At least we were until we read Glen Wallace’s (1st O/A) account of having gotten lost and stuffing it in that same leg. Oh well, I guess the rally gods were watching over the white RS this weekend. As we slowly followed the backing-up control car out of the stage, John Kisela came up behind me. It seems he had missed a turn in this stage as well. Two for two, way to go John.

The rally seemed to settle down after that. Still fast in some parts but usually with enough time to get back on time for the control. Then night came and the temperatures fell. As I’m collecting the car up on a fast down hill section in glare ice, I see Russ Kraushaar along side the road. No driver, no car. I gently apply the brakes and the car stops about a quarter mile down the road. I go back and both Russ and Dean are all right but the car is done. Some civilian natives offer them a ride into Penticton so off we go again, perhaps a bit more gingerly than before.

The final down hill on ice covered pavement is one of the great stages in North America. I’ve run it with a hefty speed on dry pavement and loved every minute of it. I’m not sure I felt quite so lovingly about running it in the ice. It was quite challenging; at one time I was more than .30 late. Larry thought it was great since the drop offs were on my side of the car. Little did he know that in the morning we would go back up that rascal with the drop offs on his side.

The second day was pretty uneventful until the last stage up some little rut disguised as a road. Larry expressed his concern, since the drop off was on his side again but he felt better after I explained that if we went off the drop off would start on his side then it would be on mine, then his, then mine, then his, etc.

Adding to the fun, just after the control at the top, we had a short run down through a tunnel to the last control. As we approached the tunnel with the control clearly in sight at its far end, there on the road was a young couple with 5 or 6 little poodles and a big yellow dog that thought he owned this road. The couple was trying to herd the poodles off the road but it was a lot like pushing Jell-O. As one or two left the road the others would run back on. They thought it was great fun. The checkpoint could clearly see our dilemma so we tip toed through without raising any dander and went on into the control. Either our balk time was accepted or this control was deleted as others encountered a similar scene.

After the smoke cleared we came second and had a great time. Congrats to Glen and Richard for there first win together. Thanks to Paul and the entire BC crowd for another outstanding event. And thanks to Larry for once again putting up with me in my rally mode.

R Dale Kraushaar