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e
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u
t
n
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n golf, scoring a zero means you didn’t
play. By mid-afternoon on Day One of
the AlCan Winter Rally, Renee and I
have already run the opening time-speeddistance section in Washington State andcrossed the border into British Columbia;
there, cruising east on Trans-Canada 1, we
see golfers at a course just off the freeway,chasing their version of perfect execution.
These players roam over the greens andfairways, finding infinite challenge in a
relatively small and well-bounded arena.
Their difficulties come partly from windI

94 ROUNDEL • MAY 2008

and precipitation and fatigue and misjudgments… just as ours will.
But our course stretches out ahead of us
to the northern horizon and beyond—and asingle round of play will take ten days.
The standard golfers shoot for is “lessthan par.” In TSD rallying, scoring a zeromeans you were perfect; there’s no suchthing as par. And golfers play as individuals, even in a foursome. One golf pro’s
foibles won’t directly affect her partners.
But in the rally car, the dependency
between driver and co-driver is explicit

and closely coupled. We’ll sink or swim asa team, like escaped felons chained
together, locked in this little red metal box.
We’ve already bobbled a bit. In that opening TSD section, the very first checkpoint
catches us between marks, and we’re a little
rattled about our time—not as badly as thenovices we see correcting wrong turns, orbeing passed by us and then re-passing, but
we know we weren’t perfect. Par, I suppose,means no worse than the others.
The second timed section of the day,run after dusk, presents the first slippery

roads, the first local traffic, and the firstencounter with a snowbank—by anothercompetitor. It pains my heart to drive pasttheir hopefully offered tow strap, but wemust be firm: There are two more checkpoints before the end of the section. We’ve
had no major errors, and we’re cautiously
optimistic heading to the nightly drivers’
meeting. Our perspective is soon restored:
Car Number One, carrying three AlCanveterans, sets par at three points for the day.
We shoot a 35.
That lead car carries a threesome that

includes veterans of the X3 squad that won
this rally one-two in 2004. Gary Webb,
who drove the winning X3, is now sharing the wheel of Greg Hightower’s Subaru WRX. Behind the TimeWise rally computer in that car is Russ Kraushaar, whoshared the Roundel X3 with Satch Carlson
in 2004. With no X3s, no diesel X5s, no
twin-turbo V8 X6s available to defend their
victory, the invincible BMW team has been
scattered and reassembled in a single
Japanese four-wheeler, with Satch sitting
this one out in San Diego. Defending thehonor of the marque, we are one of two
E30 325iX’s running in 2008.
But while the competition is fierce, thecamaraderie is even stronger. Any crewfrom any car can get advice and help fromthe veterans on the rally, which first took to
the icy winter roads of the North in 1988.
(The AlCan 5000 Rally, a more gentle summer event, began in 1984.) So when I
describe our in-car work assignments to
Russ Kraushaar and R. Dale Kraushaar—
Russ’ stepfather is in another Subaru—
they’re friendly and helpful, offering frank
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This year the Dempster was
actually dry in places.

The 325iX on Hakkapeliittas proved
capable on ice, snow, or dry roads.

96 ROUNDEL • MAY 2008

feedback on our practice, and we resolve totry some of their suggestions. Besides,
we’re running in the Equipped class, making our calculations on computers that can’t
be connected to the car, though we areallowed an accurate digital odometer. We
should have a slight margin for error notafforded to the tightly competitive Unlimited class with their integrated computers.
Day Two we run beautifully. On a longsection named 11% Grade—for literal reasons—we see the hairpin and the uphillsection early, drop to second gear before
the apex; then it’s hard hard hard on thegas, straining for traction, up past thecheckpoint crew that the hairpin telegraphed. A following hairpin, this one flat,
is soft and mushy, and I sink in the turn—so we must again try to catch up before
reaching another merciless timing crew
just over the next crest.
Our ranking this day is better; the teams
ahead of us have doubled or tripled theirfirst-day scores—or worse—but we’re
10% lower than the previous day.
On Day Three, encouraged by thechange in our procedures, we try the sameroutine during the only TSD section in the
800-mile day—and we melt down immediately. The instructions are dense, there’s
too much going on, too many changes too
close together. Our time reports are scrambled: “Three early!” then “Four late!” then“Way late!” as we pass the first checkpoint.
It’s not working to split the workload thisway, but rationality fights an uphill battle
against panic, and strong language is usedin the cabin before we fall back to our original practice. We finish the section in betterRoundel May 08 Feat.qxd:RoundFeat

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You’re Going Where?! To Do What?! In A BMW?!
The Alcan Winter Rally is an
endurance event consisting oftime-speed-distance legs, iceslaloms, and long transits. The
rally covers roughly 5,000 miles
in ten days, from Washington
State to the Arctic Circle andbeyond—far beyond. The lowest
score wins.
In 2006, we ran Mountains To
The Sea, an Oregon touring rally.
We won the novice class that day,and we celebrated with Russ andKaty Kraushaar, the overall winners. Somehow the AlCan Winter
Rally came up in conversation,
and Katy’s enthusiasm planted theseed. But it seemed like a pretty
remote idea; we had been rallying
for less than a year. Still, Katy
made it seem attainable.

After a few more events, we
decided to buy a car and dedicate
it to unpaved rallying. With a real
rally car, we could go on the
AlCan. First we made up a list ofcars we didn’t want to rally in:
Audis, Subarus, big SUVs, trucks,
two-wheel-drive rigs. We wanted
a car not too new; after all, we’dbe running the car on gravel andsnow, so it should expect somerough treatment. But we wanted a
car that would be dependable (likeour Honda), require little maintenance (like the Honda), and havereasonable horsepower (err, notlike the Honda).
Other rallyists offered advice.
“What’s the best car to take on
98 ROUNDEL • MAY 2008

the AlCan? Anything that’s notyour car!”
What about a BMW? I’d had a
325e in the early 1990s and loved
it—but it didn’t handle well in thesnow and ice of Colorado. I knew
about the 325iX back then, but
couldn’t afford one new. Finally,
after an extensive Internet search,
Craigslist popped one up in
Salem, a mere 50 miles away. The
price was a reasonable $5,000 for
a 1990 Brilliant Red coupe, supposedly with only 75,000 miles on
it. We drove down that night, took
it for a drive, noted the timing-belt
replacement sticker, heard that it
had lately been driven by agrandma. We bought it on the
spot and drove it home that night.
The car had several little

issues, and one big one: it was an
automatic. We gritted our teeth andjoked, “Hey, we’ll have a free handto drink coffee with.” But the auto
didn’t leak, and it shifted well, andthe car passed the viscouscoupling test, and we thought we’dgive it a go on a rally. We prepared
the car for the No Alibi rally held ineastern Washington in 2007. Partway through the rally, the brakecaliper came off. (See Roundel
August 2007) A faulty service while
grandma owned it was to blame.
We were able to make a quick
repair and keep going, but it was
obvious that more work wasneeded before we’d confidently
aim the car toward the Arctic

Ocean. The car sagged in the back.
Fully loaded, it really sagged. The
original springs were replaced with
new BMW ones.
The automatic transmission
was swapped out for a five-speed
manual. The car performed muchbetter.
Good tires are important tomaintain control on the icy roads
that we’d encounter. We chose
studded Nokian Hakkapeliittas,
as did many other teams.
We replaced the stock headlight wiring with large-gauge wire,
short runs, and relays, addedfour auxiliary lights to the front
bumper, and had a custom skid
plate built to protect the oil pan.
New heavy-duty battery?
Check. All fluids replaced withsynthetic versions rated for
extreme cold? Check. Antifreeze
good to -50F? Check. Engine
compartment sealed? Check.
Additional power taps in the passenger compartment? You bet.
We rubbed silicone on the rubber seals around the doors andtrunk so they wouldn’t freeze shut.
We checked brake pads, wheelalignment, fixed several warning
lights, aimed the headlights, andinstalled extra backup lights andtwo running lights on the roof rack
for bad-visibility conditions.
The week before the AlCan, we
ran the 2008 Thunderbird Rally in
Canada. Anything we didn’t need
would be left behind for the

AlCan: fewer spare parts, one lesssleeping bag, shoe traction
devices, fewer clothes. We
learned to wear our waterproof,
windproof biking pants and boots
all the time. In event the car goes
off the road, it is important to get
the emergency triangle on theroad. The next car is only one
minute behind on the TSD sections. There isn’t much time forgetting ready to get out of the car.
The AlCan Winter Rally
offered an incredible journey. We
started in Kirkland, Washington,
excited but terrified. Family andfriends lined the start andcheered us on.
The car performed well. It
was easy to manage on the ice. It
had enough power to climb thehills and cross the mountainpasses. We were fortunate tohave good weather during thetrip; the weeks leading up to therally were cold, around -50°F, but
the coldest we saw was a -10°F
briefly on the Dempster Highway
early one morning. Most of thetime, temperatures were between
10°F and 34°F.
We saw Northern Lights in
Inuvik.
We saw a steaming mooseon the Dempster Highway; wealso saw silver fox, deer, elk,bison, and caribou as we posted
several first-time accomplishments: Mile 0 on the AlCan Highway, driving on the ice road from
Inuvik to Tuktoyaktuk, crossing
the Arctic Circle, geocaches inthree provinces.
Katy Kraushaar was right.
The camaraderie among the rallyists was reason enough to go.
Now the roof rack holding theshovel, hoe, gas can, and sparetires is gone. The studded snow
tires have been replaced by thesummer tires. The mud andmuck have been washed off thecar, the survival gear removed,sponsor stickers unstuck. There
are a few new dings, and a headlight and fog light are cracked.
It looks like just any othercommuter car. But we know better.—Renee Damm

Marilyn poses at the Arctic Circle
with Erik Horst’s 325iX.

fashion, but it takes scores of miles afterthat to decompress from our failure. In aslow release of tension, like the groaning
realignment of Bear Glacier on its underlying escarpment, apologies are offered
and accepted, and we resolve to scan future
TSD instructions for such troublesome
spots to avoid a second Chernobyl.
But the damage may already be done.
Already more than half of the timed sections are complete, so we’ll have only a
few more chances at perfection. Now weare truly north, in the Yukon and the Northwest Territories; for the next few days, therally checkpoints are go/no-go style. If wemake it to Inuvik several hundred miles
above the Arctic Circle, and then Tuktoyaktuk, another 120 miles up the frozen
Mackenzie River, and then back down toEagle Plains, just twenty miles south of theCircle, we avoid 410 penalty points.
uring these long transits, the rally travels in teams, using a buddy system tolessen risk. Our team of two iXs, aone-wheel drive Saab—an intercooled
turbo four-valve motor plus open differential on a front-wheel-drive car equals
one-wheel drive—and the obligatory Subaru travel closer together the farther north
we go. The other cars on the team all haveat least one veteran AlCanner; we’re therookies, and we had been worried aboutkeeping up on the long transits. But different cars in our team share the lead, anddifferent portions of the road seem to suitcertain drivers better. Renee goes like hellon the lower Klondike, and eventually she
must lift slightly to reconnect the team.

D

Rally enthusiasm undergoes some changes during a ten-day marathon.

Heading up into Inuvik, far into the Arctic, the twilight is impossibly long; the sunsets diagonally for two and a quarter hours.
You can see the roundness of the globe.
From the other iX, Eric Horst murmurs on
the radio, “We live on a big old ball, folks.”
The sun’s light glances off the atmospherehere, like the rebound of a skipped stoneover the water, or a bullet’s ricochet off
stone, or the abrupt scattering of glass particles as a rock chips the windshield. We
see a mirage of cliffs and fog banks, changing to fractured lines, like sandstone strata
shifting horizontally. The fractured lines

don’t shimmer, they shift. For the first fivedays we don’t even turn on the audio system, overloaded by sights; we’ve reachedvisual maximum bandwidth. But later, running south atop the ridges on the middle
Dempster, we’ve adjusted and go looking
for a soundtrack, Making Movies by Dire
Straits: High on this world, c’mon and takea low ride with me… so far from home,
don’t you think of me… sometime?
We’ve tiptoed north to Tuk and backagain between freeze cycles. The local
folks bemoan the -54ºF last week, and we
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The Arctic has an awesome
beauty that justifies any
excuse to drive through it.

zard. Some of our car-preparation steps
now seem unnecessary; but we plug in theblock heater anyway, when there’s power.
The first falling snow of the trip comes at
Kilo Marker 238 southbound on the Dempster. We can’t exactly complain about thegood weather, as it’s let us cover miles withrelative ease. Only our few tastes of obscurity in foggy sections, on the ice road andlower down, give hints about how slow andnerve-wracking it could have been.
The good visibility lets us drive tohigher limits. There are few surprises on
the Dempster, as its engineers have drafted
gentle radii, and no unwarned curves overcrests. The AlCan Rally is a ten-day roadtrip through rugged country with a bunchof people who’ve been on the roads before,
and the veterans set a blistering pace. The
goal of each day: the overnight stop. Sure,
there are timed sections or ice-racing
slaloms along the way, but we’re all marching toward the horizon from the time we
wake. Folks are a bit disoriented because
the miles click by so easily. And we’re getting a lot of practice in the slick stuff. After
1,200 miles on the Dempster Highway andthe Mackenzie ice road, a driver’s tolerance for lateral slip increases, and the radio
warnings from our teammates—“a little
slick there”—mean something very different than they did a week earlier. Big
snowy downhill? Upshift. Sign says 50?
Slow to 80. (Those are kilometers, folks;
we’ve not entirely lost our minds.)
On the other hand, coming down from
Inuvik, the other iX stays behind in town
and we lose radio contact with them. At first
our three cars notch back their speed, but asYukon Highway 5 is the Klondike
Highway between Whitehorseand Dawson City.

other rallyists pass without having heard
from the tardy ones, we finally pull over ona high ridge and wait. We kick the snow
around for a quarter hour till even the sweep
truck pulls up. Sure, we’re fine, we tell
Sweep, but we’re looking for Car Four—Cue the view of headlights over ahillock three humps back. The black iX
slows barely a whisker as they pass us; wedash for our cars and set out in pursuit.
They’re out of sight, and we chase themfor miles at supra-freeway speeds—butstill within the range of comfort. That’s avariable standard; near the end of the day,the whole pack steps it up. Our steeringcorrections have become quite delicate,like the color contrast of new snow on old,
as much a probing for road feel as a directive. “Would you like to take this line,
Niner?” The car generally says yes; butwhen the car suggests a correction, we mur-mur, “Of course!” and the harmony continues. Ballet on ice. It’s too slippery towalk on, so we’d better drive.
The middle and upper Dempster Highway lies atop the ridges of the Continental
Divide, as the Rockies taper off into the sea
at the edge of North America. The surrounding landscape cuts the furrowed browof a morose teen-ager. Off the Dempster,
the Klondike Highway runs through terrainrather more muted. It’s impressive enough,wide and empty and sprinkled with minutetrees and clinging snow as far as the eye
can see—but compared to the scene aroundthe Dempster, it’s the smooth cheeks of aportly man. The Alaska Highway traverses
rather than scales the Yukon, the terrain different again, more open somehow. Maybe
the valleys are wider, or—possibly
related—maybe there’s more water
throughput in a year. The Dempster is dry,MAY 2008 • ROUNDEL 101

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Hood up to keep cool,
Marilyn waits her turn foranother ice-racing lap.

Renee Damm models thelatest in rally style.

dry, dry—in spite of being covered withice. Here along the southern edge of the
Yukon Territory, the look is more like lower
B.C., or the Pacific Northwest of the USA.
Traveling as hard as we are, the degrees
of latitude fall off quickly. Driving southfrom Tuk, the effect is like a time machine,
accelerating the arrival of Spring, the roads
clearer, the trees greener, the sun higher inthe sky, and the return of signs of humanendeavor. We cover months in days.
Down in Whitehorse again, I wash the
car against co-driver’s warning, and thesurface freezes instantly once I leave theMighty Wash. Things seem good thatnight— the doors open easily—but the nextmorning the trunk is immobile and the driver’s door will open, but not latch. We drivearound Whitehorse looking for breakfast
102 ROUNDEL • MAY 2008

holding the door strap. Once my brain
warms up enough, I cycle the power locks
twice and things are back to normal.
The second ice slalom is much slipperier than the first. The iX has ABS, but
for loose snow or gravel—or ice—ABS isa hindrance. We disconnect a sensor andthe controller goes to fail-safe mode, normal power-assisted brakes. With the studs
and the heavy siping, the Hakkapeliittas’
straight-ahead stopping power on ice isimpressive; with ABS engaged, however,it’s terrifying: The brake is a pedal with noeffect. We try to make the call at each stopwhether we want the computer assist or
not, and should probably just put a switch
in the cabin to make it easier.
My co-driver is confused by the reappearance of divider lines in the center ofthe pavement when we near the lower endof the Klondike Highway. East of Whitehorse, there’s generally both a center line
and a fog line on the pavement. The Mounties show up once in a while now, but rally
traffic has settled down into little convoys
nicely spaced, and though we’re running
fast we’re not a spectacle. It’s some measure of this event that I have gone faster on
the Alaska Highway, with the temperature
well under freezing and the surface so variable only one line for either the left or righttires could be chosen, than I’ve everdriven the iX before.
The last four timed sections are widely
spaced, and by Day Ten, we’ve got our routines figured out, our own procedures
dialed in. We’re running the Kraushaars’
suggestions, and we take only seven points
from eight checkpoints.
On the final day of the rally, the last car
in the field, #24, finally gets it right. They
run with zero error for each measured leg,and finish with an eight-part sum that’s thesame as each of its addends: 0. Twenty-fourcars had ten chances each to run perfectly
on time, but only one has done so. It’s beena long road and a lot of effort chasing thatzero—the rally equivalent of a hole in one.
In the final tally, we lead all other
Equipped entrants by 38 points. “First In
Class” is the etching on the highball-glass
trophy. It’s a precious treasure to be packed
away for the long drive home. 

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MAY 2008 • ROUNDEL 103