46 adventurous rally teams took to the back roads of Colorado’s Continental Divide, high in the Rockies, on Thursday, July 16th, for the Colorado Adventure Rally, sanctioned by the SCCA Colorado Region. After a delightful reception at the Drury Plaza Hotel, teams departed in the morning for 2.5 days of rally over 600 miles of combined back roads and gravel roads, crossing the divide three times, including Loveland Pass at over 11,000 feet.
While many checkpoints were identified in the route instructions, the rally incorporated many ghost checkpoints. You knew how many checkpoints to expect, but had no clue as to their placement along the route.
The first day took crews to an overnight stop in Steamboat Springs. Wildfires canceled a chunk of the TSD sections, but teams got to see firefighting planes dip into the reservoir to scoop up water. Top scores after Day 1 were all under 10 seconds total penalty for Equipped Class teams. GPS Class was in the teens, SOP Class in the thirties, and 1st TIMER Class in the thirties on up.
Day 2 saw more rugged landscape and interesting footnotes in the instructions about ranches, gold mines, disputes, and battles that were passed along the way. The day ended early in Glenwood Springs, with time to grab a beer with new friends and dinner at the good scratch kitchen. Several cars developed problems. A late 1930’s Plymouth seized a front caliper, and a modified Subaru Baja lost the bolt in a rear control arm, but found a replacement at a hardware store and rejoined the rally on a 16.5-minute Time Allowance. The rally used Richta Rally for scoring the 119 timed checkpoints.
Day 3 was again abbreviated by the Leadville wildfire. But the “top of nearest minute” stage start time (as opposed to CZT-Car Zero Time) allowed cars to run at their own pace to reach the finish in Idaho Springs. We chose to skip breaks and finish just in time for the World Cup final game. Rallymaster Jim Crittenden and his wife Ann Crittenden received a standing ovation for creating and pulling off a tremendously successful multi-day rally that catered to seasoned rallyists and first-timers; pizza was shared, trophies distributed, emails exchanged, and almost everyone headed home.
We grabbed a box of leftover pizza and headed for nearby Mestaa’ėhehe Mountain Lookout. Parking at 10,800 feet, we were packing our backpacks when Michelle and Laura, Car 44 from the rally, drove up. We hiked 1.3 miles and gained 680 ft of elevation to the lookout at 11,496ft, with views 100 miles in every direction, including Denver. The first night staying in the lookout, we were awoken at 4:30 AM by hikers coming up to watch the sunrise. But we continued the Colorado Adventure!
Teams from the Northwest and Canada joined as Team Cascadia, sharing stories, providing support, and decals. Three of the Team ran Equipped Class: Organizers Bart Vogelzang and Glyn Trafford in Car 5, a white Subaru Crosstrek Wilderness. Car 1 was a white/green Toyota Corolla GR in Equipped Class with Marinus and Renee Damm. Our grey Subaru Outback, Car 2, was driven by me, Paul Eklund, and Yulia Smolyansky, an expert Navigator. Car 8 was a silver Subaru Baja driven by Andy and Mercedes Lilienthal in SOP Class.
Thank you to Andy Lilienthal for the photo above and Awards Ceremony. The remaining Colorado Adventure Rally photos are from Yulia and I along our Colorado Adventure!