Pacific Forest Rally 2004 Stories

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We started off Thursday by trailering the car up to Merritt in our covered trailer courtesy of RTR Trailermart. This was definitely the way to go! All our luggage, food, equipment, tools, etc. were nicely enclosed in the trailer.

We finished the rally safely, which was our number one objective. Considering that 11 of the 33 teams that entered did not finish the rally at all due to various issues like mechanical problems and going off-road, this was a huge achievement for our very first performance rally ever.

We also achieved our second objective, which was not to finish in last place, beating more experienced rallyists. To our delight, we came in second in our class and 13th overall out of 23 in the regional competition. We had been seeded in 33rd (last) place because it was our first rally, and we steadily moved up the leaderboard. It was an amazing experience to be running in the same events with Richard, McGeer, Olsen, and other notable names. We were also recognized at the awards ceremony for having finished our very first rally.

On Thursday we ran recce over the route, which was an interesting experience as we had never done pace notes before. Our technique improved steadily, though we did not really go back and change our notes from the early stages too much, deciding rather just to leave them as they were.

It rained in the morning of the rally in Merritt, which, combined with loose gravel and thin layers of mud on top of a harder surface made for very slick forest roads. This kept the speeds and times down through the very challenging routes that ran through narrow, twisty, tree-lined meadows or by the sides of the mountains bordered by drop-offs to one side and rock walls on the other and everything else in between.

The morning route conditions actually worsened as more cars passed by, leading to slower subsequent times on the Comstock and Lily Lake stages. The weather cleared in the afternoon and these stages were also much longer and faster so most teams were able to improve on their times on subsequent passes through each stage. The degree of difficulty of the routes is evidenced by our averaging only around 70-80 km/h on them even though we were driving all-out. The tent that we had, courtesy of Loaded Designs, was extremely useful in the wet early morning weather as were the generator and tools from Robinson Rentals and Cowichan Rentals.

From a driving perspective, the route was very challenging in the morning due to the conditions. The afternoon stages were longer and faster. We'd also made better notes for the later stages, having improved our technique through the recce, and got into a good rhythm. I noted that for the most part, the driving was a jump up from TSD, but not a huge jump, given the antics one may get up to when trying to make up time. The added factor of driving on closed roads and not having civilians popping up over a crest actually made it safer than TSD in this regard.

We had no mechanical problems with the Impreza, though we had an “off” on the final stage of the day (Helmer South) where we slid and were briefly traveling opposite to the desired direction of travel, hit the side of a ditch, and ripped out a few of the rear bumper fasteners, causing the bumper to tilt up at an amusing angle. We were able to restart the car and carry on. We were making very good time up to that point, and despite the off, we still beat our previous time on that stage. Our off probably contributed a few more dents to our rocker panels which are now in need of fixing.

Some of the stages, especially Mab Lake, were so rock-strewn that we damaged our rocker panels and were briefly jolted onto two wheels. We were lucky that we had up to 3/8” of aluminum plate protecting some of the more delicate parts of the car. This is one tough car given the abuse it suffered and we were amazed we did not have to dig into our cache of spare parts.

We had been running on some very tired rubber, so in retrospect, we should have considered switching either to the 14" tires we'd brought along, or to run the pair of spare tires we'd obtained that day in order to grab a bit more grip. The smaller tires may also have helped get the car up the numerous hills just a little faster.

This is truly a team sport, from sponsors, to our service crew of 3 (Matt, Rich, and Scott) that were able to keep the car running, and of course, Christa, who helped me keep the car shiny side up and rubber side down. We've learned lots and will be even better prepared for our next stage event.

We also obtained great in-car camera footage which I’ll be editing and posting on our site. The Pacific Forest Rally will be broadcast on Sportsnet during primetime probably around Nov 15.

I'd like to thank the organizers, and workers for an incredible event as well as the numerous people who wished us luck along the way.

- Martin

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