Cascade Lakes, Hill Climb Options

[Randal]

Do we have any members here from Southern Oregon that are members of the Siskiyou sports car club?

Sure would like to figure out how register for the Hill Climb on June 11th.

Thanks.

[Randal]

First of all the place is beautiful, more so on Friday and Sunday when it was sunny and no rain.

Richard Linsdall, who came up to hang out and I had a great time. Well organized event and nice people. Some very fast cars and excellent drivers, one that just blew me away watching him in the rain.

When you do the hill "drive through" everyone tells you just late apex everything, so you start thinking this hill isn't going to be that hard.

That is until you start up hill using a couple of gears you seldom use in AutoXing. I mean this hill is way fast. I was using 4th gear in two places.

So the speeds make it very interesting and it takes a bunch of runs to start feeling like you think you might know where you need to go. Personally I think it'd take a bunch of years to get aggressive on this hill.

My objective was to get a 2 minute run and keep the top side up, which I accomplished on Saturday. On Sunday my second run was a 159.3 which put me at the front of my class (SPU - Super Production under 3 liters). The car was working just great, abet no temperature in the tires at all (*). My main competition was a hill climber (nice guy) out of Canada driving a light weight mini race car with a 2.0 liter Vauxhall engine.

On Sunday everything (timing / radios) was working great so we got three runs. On my third and last run I started having some electrical issue dealing with fuel. I had a great run going up to turn 4 and the car just stopped. I did manage to get it started and back up the hill, so didn't have to call the wrecker.

The surface is pretty rough and the road isn't all that smooth, so the cars take a beating. My guess is that some electrical connection has gotten loose, but will start figuring it out today.

My favorite part of the course is after turn three, which when driving up in a pickup seems to be very straight forward. It is a windy road that you can pretty much straighten up with a good line. It is also the fastest part of the course.

At speed you go charging up to the start of this windy bit, which is all forest (closed in and dark) and it seems pretty straight forward. At speed it scares the Willie out of you. Took me a bunch of runs to stay wide open all the way up to the chicane bit which are there to slow you down. On Sunday I was trapped at 86mph right before the chicane, which was only 6 mph below the big HP cars. At the end of the chicane I exited at 72.

The driver that impressed me the most was Bill Cooper who (now retired) who was the chief driving instructor for Bondurant. On Saturday we were the corner workers at turn 10, which is the one the fastest parts of the course. It was raining on Saturday so it was a big surprised when he came charging up in his (very fast) LS Corvette (I'll bet it was 600hp) and took a perfect line and just tore around turn 10 and then 11. On this second run, in the dry, he did exactly the same thing. Now you say OK, no big deal, the guy can drive equally well in the rain as in the wet, but he was TTOD doing those runs, only .300 off each other. Just a mind blower. Impressive.

Talked to a lot of the hill climb guys who run Medford all the time. Everyone loves that place so looking forward to heading back.

Wish me luck finding my electrical problem.

I'll post some pictures when Richard sends them. He was the official photographer.


(*) On my Sunday runs I drove down the hill to the starting line and spent the entire 2 miles down going from side to side to get the tires hot. I was first in line so thought I get some benefit.

When I checked the tire temperatures at the end of the run they were COLD to the touch. That road just sucked the heat right out of the tires. BTW the road was cold the entire time. It was rough enough to ruin one of my Goodyear slicks (delaminated) and I also picked up a big screw when I touched the inside of the road getting a little aggressive at turn 7.