Forest fires can work to your advantage. Thanks to the reign of fire that visited Colorado in early July, the Pikes Peak International Hillclimb was postponed until August 12th this year. So a few friends and I piled into a couple of Westfalia campers and headed for the clouds. A few random notes...
It's the only night of the year you can camp on the mountain, at least without having to hike for a few miles. It's not the cheapest campsite in Colorado or even the prettiest, but when the alternative is getting through the gates between 4 and 8 am - it's a pretty good option. We were munching on pancakes with real maple syrup while everyone else was slogging up the hill. Also, we were able to drive the racetrack the night before the race. How many events let you do that?
The actual campsites were pretty poor where we were - it was basically a gravel parking lot that was being used to store aggregate for various construction jobs. But the porta-potties were clean and plentiful and everyone went to bed early and quietly.
If you want to watch up top by Devil's Playground, you can't camp up there. So you have to get up at 4am and pack up your tent while making loud and profane conversation with your bros about sleeping habits and bodily functions as you fire up your fleet of modified Audis to warm up for a while before motoring up the hill. This should be done while essentially leaning against another vehicle, such as a handy Westfalia. One of these individuals claimed to be Bill Caswell's navigator - Bill, you can do better.
This was the first "fully paved" year, although you wouldn't know from where we watched. We were at Ski Area, which let us see a hairpin left exit into a fairly long right and then a blast up a straight. Braking, cornering, acceleration - a pretty good place to watch. It's been paved there for some time, I believe. The lack of gravel up top means the cars don't need to be dual-purpose, and I think we're going to see a real evolution of the cars in the next few years. The motorcycles in particular.
The race this year suffered from a lot of wrecks. A LOT. I can think of four Life Flight chopper rides, two of which were the result of this enormous wreck. We could see it from below - not the crash itself, but the final resting place which was a long long long long way from the road. Sometimes the red flags were due to mechanical failures. Every time the race got red-flagged, there was a delay of at least 30 minutes and sometimes much longer. There were 8 red flags. It was a LONG race.
Weather: we got strong sun, wind, clouds, thunder, rain, hail and cold. There was actually snow up top, leading to a repositioning of the finish line for the last few cars. I was happy to note that Bill Caswell's navigator and his buddies was trapped up in the wind and snow and unable to come to lower altitudes until the race was over.
The semi was the best run of the event. Simply ridiculous and he left a massive amount of rubber on the road. All trucks should have that turn-in ability. A couple of stock cars won the "best noise of the weekend" event in my books - you can't beat a big V8 turning at ridiculous speeds. The electric cars were eerily silent and had to run a noisemaker, but the volume of the noisemaker was mostly enough to keep you from stubbing your toe on the car in the pits. I'd make mine a 120 dB ice cream truck noisemaker.
Sidecar monkeys are crazy
There are a lot of amateurs racing the event. You could see the pros - ACP, Rhys Millen, the insane semi - but there were quite a few guys taking early apexes, sawing at the wheel or generally looking spooked. We were able to identify at least two drivers who weren't going to make it to the top correctly based on how they were driving when they went past us. It had me thinking about what would be involved in entering. Not in winning - I don't have the cohones to go 100% up the fast top section - but taking part.
The cars are sent off at approximately 2 minute intervals. I'm not sure why they're that far apart, but it sure stretches out a day. The race is very well covered on the radio via AM, so it's actually quite easy to follow what's going on. The corner worker at our corner also was happy to share information. Every other race event I've attended should take notes. Sebring in particular.
Imagine a racetrack where the only way out was a lap of the track with the cars two abreast, then exiting through pit lane immediately following the end of the race. Because it exited via the pits, any loading of cars on trailers will stop the exodus of spectators. The exit from the track itself would be a narrow, rough two-lane residential street ending in a traffic light. Because the only exit is via the track, nobody can leave before the checker. Oh, and the track is 14 miles long. It took us 2.5 hours to get off the mountain, all of it in bumper-to-bumper traffic. In a loaded Westfalia, running downhill.
Between the very late finish (dusk!) and the long drive down the mountain, we didn't hit the road for the 6-hour drive home until 10:30. A pair of Subaru-powered Westys will do quite well on mountain passes, and if you need to pull over for a two-hour nap at 2 am they're ridiculously comfortable.
Fun weekend. Frustrating because of all the extended delays, but because of the radio coverage we felt we had a good idea of what was going on and we were able to see a lot of interesting cars. It's more spectator-friendly than a lot of other events, that's for sure.
'95. the only year it was ever run on the "short" course due to weather...a near blizzard near the top on July 4th!
Did this car from last year run again?
