Kananaskis Rally 2009

The 2009 edition of the Kananaskis Rally took place on November 8, 2009. There were 11 cars entered for the rally, and the forecast was for unseasonable warm weather approaching the event. I was grateful that Christa Monasch agreed to join me as co-driver for the 3rd time in the last year.

Recce, registration and technical inspections occurred on Saturday, the day before the rally (Recce definition: we get 2 passes of the stages to prepare our stage notes; on the first pass the driver typically calls out the corners and the co-driver takes notes, on the 2nd pass the co-driver reads the notes back and the driver makes slight corrections). It was clear during recce that the event was going to be slippery, despite the forecast. I would guess that between 60 -80% of all stage kms were snow or ice covered to some degree.

The studded snow tires went on, and I started the rally on Sunday morning with the same3 goals as always: 1) Have fun; 2) Finish; and, 3) try to finish in a better position than my starting number. Our starting position was as Car #9.

The slippery conditions caught out a number of drivers throughout the day, and although there were winter road conditions, we still had summer ditches. We were fortunate to have no encounters with the ditch this year, and were able to keep the car on the road all day. However, about half way through the second last stage, the ‘low-coolant’ light began flashing and the car started overheating. We let off a bit and finished the stage. One 24km long stage and a 7km transit left to go, and the car has no coolant. Inspection reveals that coolant is leaking coolant from somewhere I can’t see on the water pump. There was a small creek near the start of the next stage and I filled the coolant reservoir right to the top, hoping we would get through the stage. We decided to just drive out the stage and not make the car work too hard. We were 8 kms into the stage when the low-coolant light started flashing at us again. We made it to the stage finish, and then finally back to the service area – the rally finish, although the car was starting to get pretty hot. Fortunately the weather was cool, because this VW was 'air-cooled' for about 23kms, just like the old bettles.

Only 7 cars ended up finishing the rally. We finished in 4th place, and had a great time so all goals were fulfilled. The car is going back to storage until I get my workshop finished, and then I’ll start looking at the problem with the water pump sometime this winter.
The next rally in western Canada is the Big White Rally near Kelowna. This is a brand-new event, and I’d love to be there, but it’s just a bit too far and at a really busy time of year. I’ll have to wait until Cochrane 2010 to rally again.