Apologies that my updates have been so brief, it is hard to remember everything that happened and get it down straight, especially after a long drive.

This morning we left Dawson City and on the way out, did the Mountain Dome TSD (first run in 2006 I think). It follows a dirt road uphill (CAST of 16MPH), and then an acute left onto a paved road that takes you up to Mountain Dome, which overlooks Dawson and the river, then we had a 10 minutes pause and ran the rest of the TSD down the mountain.

View from the Mountain Dome:


Tomorrow we head to Fairbanks, via Tok.

Let me talk a bit about some of the other entrants!

Today, the cars:
Car 1 is a white Subaru Legacy, with Alcan legend Gary Webb (yes he's won a few times) and the Alcan organizer Jerry Hines' 17 year old son, Cameron Hines. He seems to be having a great time and taking a lot of photos.

Car 2 is the silver Forester XT (us!) with R.Dale, Glenn & Jenne. Jenne and I worked together for 11 years or something, and have kept in touch even after she left. Yes, she's 6 months pregnant, a math wizz (handy for TSD rallying) and has done a few rallies before with R.Dale and me.

Car 3 is a red Forester XT with Frank McKinnon and John Putnam. Frank and John did the 2008 Winter Alcan with us, as well as the 2006 summer Alcan. They hail from Portland, Oregon. They are always in good spirits, even when they have a bad scoring day.

Car 4 is the BMW 328 wagon with Marinus and Rene Damm. Two nicer people you will not meet (and I am not saying this just to be kind) --- we've been on a lot of rallies with them. A few years ago they were "getting into rallying" and now they are excellent competitors. Other than missing a pause instruction, they had some amazing low scores at Mountains to Sea rally and beat us soundly! They both also have a great sense of humor, which comes across well on the radio.

Car 5 is the black Contour SVT, with Chuck and J, our Arctic Challenger team mates. They are in "S" class, which means they are not using a computer. CHuck is an Electrical Engineer, and J is a defense laywer. We had a drink last night and they are very interesting guys.

Car 6 is orange and black GC8 Subaru Impreza wagon, with Oliver and Kacee. They're doing pretty well, and having fun.

Car 8 is the yellow Toyota FJ, with two very nice ladies, Carolyn and Jessica. Their husbands are entered on bikes. They are having fun from what I can see!

Equipment
Here is a quick summary of the kind of gear we are using.

Our car is a 2008 Forester XT (turbo) manual, with Cooper Weathermaster ST2 tires. Cooper is our sponsor, and makes a great product. Very durable and excellent grip. These are winter tires, but we are running them without studs for summer. A very versatile tire and good on gravel. We have two full size spares, one in the trunk, one on the roof rack.

We have a Primitive Enterprises skid plate set (front and rear), a East Coast Bullbar nudge bar, with Hella 4000 HID driving lights (not needed so much with the long summer days up here). Home made mudflaps, a Yakima basket case roof rack, complete with cut down hoe, complete the picture.

Electronics wise, we have an ICOM VHF/UHF radio, a Timewise 798A rally computer, a TomTom 930T GPS, a GPS data logger (that produces the maps I post here) and a Hella TC400 Tire Pressure Monitoring System.

Day 6 Scores
We took 6 seconds today on Mountain Dome, and the Damms scored 10. Sorry guys!
Car 6 got 5, excellent job!

My rough math (with drop of worst control, which may change tomorrow) has
Car 2 Wallace/Kraushaar/Pierce   35 (-2 worst control) = 33
Car 4 Damm/Damm                         44 (-3 worst control) = 41

8 points is a more comfortable lead than we had yesterday. Phew!

Some drama in the bike category, with the bikers that did the North Canol extreme control/camp getting their best TSD score in place of Midnight Dome and Long Lake, so our team mate Mark (bike 20) moved up to first overall bike. There were a few high bike scores on a couple of controls on the way up the mountain, I hope they have the right checkpoint times for the right bikes...

For everyone else's scores best for you to go look at the full summary.

Day 6 Maps