Two days, two tracks

Posted on June 28, 2013 by dhill

It has been a busy week, so I’m a bit late posting this.

Saturday, June 22

I went to High Plains Raceway on Saturday with the Z Car Club of Colorado. This was my first day with the ZCCC. When running a CECA day, they prefer drivers to have their cars run through tech inspection before getting to the track. For that, they arranged for Peak Eurosport to do the inspections. If you don’t do that, they’ll still inspect you at the track before the drivers’ meeting. ZCCC has a couple tech sessions in the week prior to the event. If you miss those and want an inspection at the track, it’s an extra ten bucks.

In addition to getting the car teched before the event, I also did a little additional preparation. I’ve run out of gas at HPR twice. Well, not at HPR but between HPR and the nearest gas station (17 miles away). So I bought a 5 gallon gas can. I had to snicker a bit when I realized that this can holds half a tank of gas. Properly prepared, I should never run out of gas at the track again.

I also finally bought a lawn chair that fits in the car. All our lawn chairs are the old-fashioned kind, mesh on an aluminum frame. The sort they used to sell back in the sixties. The newer type when folded aren’t much bigger than the car’s soft top and easily fit in the boot. So, in addition to not worrying about running out of gas I could also relax in a comfy chair. Let the fun begin!

ZCCC splits drivers into four groups: A, B, C, and D. A is Expert and D is Novice. I elected to run in the B group. I can’t imagine calling myself expert at this any time soon. They had 46 cars turn out, including 21 Datsun/Nissan/Infiniti, 7 Miatas, 6 Corvetttes, 5 Porsches and a variety of others. Part of that variety was two Elises. There were a few familiar faces from CECA days and everybody made me feel right at home. A good group and I’m sure I’ll join them for another track day sometime.

The weather was fairly warm. Mostly sunny, until the end of the day when a thunder storm passed west of the track, moving south to north. On the news that night I learned that that storm dumped golf ball sized hail on the prairie. I’m glad it missed the track!

I had an unbroken string of days at HPR where I improved my best time each day. “Had”, as Saturday was the first time I wasn’t faster than my previous outing. My best lap was in the first session, two laps under 2:20. I keep working on finding a faster way around the track. I’m blaming my slower times on the hotter conditions until I learn the real reason. I’ve decided I can go quicker by taking later apexes on several of the turns. I dedicated my last session to trying this. I think I’m headed in the right direction, in spite of the hard data indicating otherwise. Next time I’ll remember to take my pyrometer so I can learn just how hot my tires are getting and collect some additional data.

I made a video of the day, this time a “Frankenlap”. I ran five sessions and mounted the camera in a different place for each. One was mounted inside the car, directed at me. I used that as the “master” shot (primarily to get the best sound) and spliced in bits from each of the other views.

Sunday, June 23

Michael and I went to Speed Raceway down in Centennial. It’s an indoor go-kart track that runs electric carts. We went with LOCO and had 15 folks turn out for the event.

They time each lap for each kart. Results are purely based on lap times, not who gets the checkered flag first. They tell drivers that if a faster driver catches up, let him pass. That may be counter to lots of peoples’ natural inclination.

We got to run three races, the first two which they characterize as “practice” and “qualifying”. They put a maximum of six cars in each group, so to get times for everybody we had three groups. Michael and I ran together the first two times. I was third, he was second each time. We both managed to improve our times each session. Michael ended up fourth overall while I was sixth.

It was a lot of fun, but I got pretty beat up by the kart. I was still hurting a bit from my day at HPR. I need to get a knee pad for my left leg. Even though I’m securely belted into my seat, my left leg takes a beating, leaving me bruised and abraded. And from experience I know I get thrown around pretty badly by the karts. The seats aren’t exactly made for me and the restraints aren’t the best racing harnesses. I ended up with a giant bruise on my back, about the size of my hand with fingers extended. As they say, “no pain, no gain!”

We even got a little podium ceremony. No champagne to spray, not even airline sized bottles as befitting such a colossal event!

Finally, it was good it was an indoor track, as it rained fairly hard while we were racing. It was hot out, so when we got out of the car I told Michael to leave the window cracked a bit. When we got back out, his seat was dry but mine was fairly soaked. So it goes.

Tourmaline Lake

Posted on June 20, 2013 by dhill

Sunday, June 16

Tourmaline is a gemstone that comes in a wide variety of colors. More technically, tourmaline is a crystal boron silicate mineral compounded with elements such as aluminum, iron, magnesium, sodium, lithium, or potassium. Whatever that means. Was the lake given this name because tourmaline can be found there, or because of the color? I have no idea.

There are two obvious routes to reach Tourmaline Lake. In either case, you get there by visiting Odessa Lake first, meaning you can start either at Bear Lake or the Fern Lake trailhead. It is nearly a mile shorter starting from Bear Lake, but I chose to start at the Fern Lake trailhead for two reasons. First, the trail from Bear Lake descends about 500′ between Lake Helene and Odessa Lake, meaning I’d have to do an uphill stretch on the way back. I like to get most of my uphill hiking done before lunch. Second, and more importantly, I haven’t hiked from the Fern Lake trailhead since last fall’s fire.

The fire started on October 9 in rugged terrain near the Pool. It was still burning November 30 when seventy mile per hour winds pushed it to Moraine Park. Except for a small stand of trees damaged on the south side, Moraine Park looks almost untouched by the fire – the grass is regrown and although many of the shrubs along the stream were burned many of them are now sprouting green leaves. It appears to me that many of those shrubs have black bark on the trunks (stems?) so it may be that fewer of them burned than I originally surmised.

I arrived at the trailhead shortly after eight and was on the trail by 8:20. It was a pleasant sunny morning. Forecast for Denver was a high of 84, so I figured maybe ten degrees cooler at the trailhead and another few degrees at Tourmaline. The weather report suggested a fifty percent chance of rain. But at eight, there were no clouds in the sky and no wind to speak of.

Burned area south of the Big Thompson

Within a couple hundred yards of the trailhead, I could see large burned areas across the river on the south side of the valley. In my mind, I always felt the section of this trail, from the trailhead to the Pool, is very similar to the lower section of the Thunder Lake trail in Wild Basin. Both run alongside the north bank of a large, boisterous stream and have very gentle gradients. On the Thunder Lake trail, you don’t get to the burn area of the Ouzel fire until well after you cross the river. On the Fern Lake trail, there is very little fire damage on the trail itself. There are a few small burned spots right along the trail before arriving at the Pool.

Looking towards Trail Ridge Road

At the Pool, the trail crosses to the south side of the Big Thompson and splits: Cub Lake to the left, Fern Lake up and to the right. Not long after that junction, the Fern Lake trail crosses Fern Creek. This crossing is a simple log bridge – two logs side by side, cut flat for a walkway, with a smaller log serving as a railing. Here the fire crossed the creek with burned trees and blackened ground on both sides of the creek. But the bridge was, strangely, untouched. From here the trail climbs steadily and zig-zags a couple of times reaching Fern Falls before finally flattening and straightening on the final approach to Fern Lake. At times the hiker is presented with a view of the terrain on the north side of the valley. That is where most of the fire burned, all the way up to the tree line.

I didn’t see any snow on the ground until reaching Fern Lake, where a snow bank covered the trail. By now the skies along the divide were no longer blue. Trying to be witty I might say the weather performed alchemy, transforming cobalt to lead. But the clouds weren’t that gray. At Fern Lake the trail crosses the outlet then passes through a boulder field before regaining the forest. From here to the Odessa Lake spur, the trail climbs steadily and provides the occasional view of Fern Lake through the trees.

The spur trail to Odessa Lake crosses the stream once again. The trail here is quite close to the stream. There is quite a bit of runoff and the trail here is wet and muddy. The trail dumps you at the northern end of the lake with a nice view of Notchtop. To get to Tourmaline Lake, circle to the west and south until reaching Tourmaline Creek. From here, there’s not much of a trail. Just follow the stream. I occasionally found a faint trail or a few cairns, but that was the exception.

The hike gets steep here. From trailhead to Tourmaline Lake the total elevation gain is 2,470′ over 5.4 miles. But the elevation gain from Odessa to Tourmaline is 560′ of that and in only about a half mile. The stream falls down the mountainside in braids and quite often underneath piles of boulders. I took my time on the steep parts, taking in the view of Joe Mills Mountain. The trail from Odessa to Bear Lake is a visible gash on the far side of the valley.

Here the clouds got productive. After one steep ascent the route flattens out a bit. This is where the graupel started falling. Neither snow nor hail, but something in between it melted fairly quickly when it hit the boulders, making them somewhat slippery. I put my windbreaker on (just shorts and Hawaiian shirt necessary until now) and the little pellets were now quite audible. After a short while the trail gets steep again for the final assault on the lake. There was some snow on the ground. I came prepared with micro spikes but never put them on. I postholed in a couple of places but the snow wasn’t much of an issue.

Tourmaline pano

Arriving at the lake, I set up the GoPro for a timelapse before tucking in to my picnic lunch. The sky was solid formless cloud with no apparent motion. I let the camera run anyway, as you never know what you’ll get. (In this case, I got nothing. So no time lapse video for this lake. Yet.) But because of the clouds, I didn’t bother setting up the SLR for a time lapse and instead climbed up a pile of boulders in an attempt to get a nicer angle.

Tourmaline Lake

Seems a turkey sandwich always tastes better when I’m sitting at an alpine lake, even if it has been slightly smashed in the pack. And even if the clouds are starting to look a bit threatening. I didn’t dawdle long. I often linger for an hour or so, to make sure I take in all I can. But I didn’t like the looks of things, so I packed up and headed down the mountain. Just in time to get graupeled on again. I managed to retrace my steps, finding most of the trail fragments and cairns I saw on the way up.

On the final steep part before reaching Odessa, the precipitation changed to rain and thunder started rumbling through the valley. At first, it was just a light sprinkle but by the time I reached Odessa I decided it was more likely to get worse before it got better so I dug the poncho out of the pack. It rained steadily from there to Fern Lake, then only lightly until clearing up at Fern Falls.

Rain lashes Fern Lake

Not long after Fern Falls, the clouds had completely disappeared.

I took a number of photos of the burned sections right along the trail, but most of them are not very interesting – or perhaps misleading. Posting a few pictures of burned trees along the trail may give the impression there’s more damage than there really is. As I said earlier, it is often just a few feet of burn where the fire crossed the trail. But I will post one more, a panorama built from three photos around a bend in the trail. Note that the trees appear undamaged; only the deadfall actually burned.

Burned section of trail

All in all, a quite enjoyable hike. I’d like to revisit the lake with better weather, perhaps next time from Bear Lake.

Timetable

	There	Back
Trailhead	08:20:00 AM	03:50:00 PM
The Pool	09:00:00 AM	03:05:00 PM
Fern Lake	10:10:00 AM	02:00:00 PM
Odessa Lake	11:00:00 AM	01:30:00 PM
Tourmaline Lake	12:10:00 PM	12:55:00 PM

CP Colorado

Posted on June 10, 2013 by dhill

Yesterday was the 30th Annual Colorado Concours d’Elegance & Exotic Car Show, benefitting CP Colorado. Local and regional car clubs showcase about 500 rare and exotic sports cars. I’ve known about the show for a few years. The first year I owned the Lotus, the promoters were looking for a car that wasn’t in the show so they could do a television spot during channel 9’s local Sunday morning show and I volunteered for that.

Porsche Carrera GT

But this is the first time I’ve entered the car into any car show of any sort. They have two kinds of entries – display only and judged. Not knowing anything about how it works, I elected to enter as a judged car. In the weeks leading up to the show, I learned that at this one the judging is done entirely on how clean the car is. That is, you won’t lose any points for having the non-original equipment. There are a lot of different car makes and models in this show, and the judges aren’t experts on all of them.

I didn’t manage to get the car detailed before the show. The extent of my preparation was a fairly thorough wash after the Braille Rally on Saturday. I have a number of black marks around the rear wheels and a big splotch of dried adhesive where the prior owner mounted his radar detector. And, of course, the car isn’t a museum piece, like so many of the other cars entered. I’m driving it all the time, and that includes four or five track days a year. So I’ve been joking that I expect to get last place. Somebody has to be last, right?

1937 BMW

Michael went with me. We got there a bit before 8am, entering the gates a couple cars behind a 1937 BMW. Porsche is the featured marque for this year’s show; they arrived using a different entrance, so we did a little “zipper merge” with them as we rolled onto the field. We didn’t have to go far – the Corvettes were immediately to the left of the entrance, and the Lotuses were just past them. Steve directed us to a spot between Tatiana and William. When we got onto the grass from the sidewalk, we heard the strangest noise. The car is so low, the grass is taller. The blades of grass brushed along the flat bottom of the car making a noise that sounded a lot like water coming off the tires, as if the sprinklers had run too long and had just been shut off.

After getting situated, I headed out for my first pass to check out all the cars. Because Porsche is the featured marque, it seemed like they comprised half the field. That’s a bit of an exaggeration – they probably weren’t there in any greater number than for the typical Cars and Coffee Saturday in Lafayette. Okay, so maybe they were half the field. There were several notable cars there, including a Porsche Carrera GT. And for the first time, I saw more Ford GT’s than Elises (3 to 2).

The Lotus area

I don’t know how many cars actually showed up. I know we were expecting a few more Lotuses. There are sixteen listed in the program but I only counted thirteen (twelve in the Lotus area and one in the Founder’s Circle). Four Elises are in the program, but we only had two. So I’m not sure if the 500 cars is a count of cars entered or the number that actually show up.

The weather was very nice. We were situated near some trees which provided welcome shade and there were a couple of picnic tables nearby. I’m still in the dark ages as far as lawn chairs go (having only the prehistoric aluminum folding chairs), so Michael and I either wandered around, used the picnic table, or sat in other people’s chairs. Clearly, I need to upgrade to a chair I can carry in the Lotus.

It was after noon before the judges showed up in our area. There’s a place on the form for “Class”. I had no idea what class I was in, so left it blank. Turns out the judging for Lotuses is broken down to Chapman era cars and post-Chapman cars. I believe Tatiana’s and mine were the only Lotuses getting judged. So my prophecy of being in last place was confirmed. Maximum score possible for my car was 250.5 and I managed 214.8. As I said above, it’s totally based on cleanliness. I was awarded full score for “operation of lights, wipers, door latches” even though I had a headlight burn out last week. And full points for “tool bag, tools, jack and tire strap” and “spare tire and wheel assembly”. The Elise has no spare tire.

Second Place!

So my last place entry managed a red ribbon for second place!

I think I’ll do this again next year, judging and all. Now that I have a “baseline” score, we’ll see how many points a good detail is worth.

Braille Rally

Posted on June 8, 2013 by dhill

Today I participated in the Braille Rally for the benefit of the American Council of the Blind and Visually Impaired of Colorado. I’ve never done a rally before. The idea is you drive from point A to point B following a set of directions. The object is to get to the destination having driven the closest number of miles to the control. It doesn’t matter how long it takes you, it’s not a race. Typically, the clues can be quite tricky. But for this rally it was simply following the directions as only the driver could be looking for clues.

There where three ‘classes’ based on the navigator: Braille, large print, and sighted. The sighted navigators had to wear glasses that simulate visual impairment. I didn’t get a good car count. I was told we had about a dozen cars but there might be a late registration. They were hoping to get more people to participate, so it’s disappointing the turnout was so low. There were five LoCo members, not including Skip, who was the rally master. Two Elises, an Evora, an Esprit, and an Elan. We also had a Hyundai Veloster, a Subaru, a classic Chevy Nova and a Corvette ZR-1 as well as a couple Miatas.

We met in the parking lot of what used to be a Walgreen’s. For some reason, I was thinking it would be on the north side of Colfax, so I drove around lost for a while. I finally got my act together and found the place, to be told that everybody was watching me drive around aimlessly. We got checked in, and chatted over coffee and muffins. Drivers got souvenir bags and were assigned numbers on nice magnetic signs. By my count, half the cars were fiberglass, so the magnetic signs weren’t much help.

I never use the trip odometer on the car, so I don’t know how to reset it. Somebody showed me once, back on the Mine Tour drive, but I’ve forgotten and didn’t manage to press the magic button this morning. No problem, I’ve been using a speedometer app on my smart phone for the last several weeks. Works great, has a nice trip odometer, trip clock, altimeter, compass. And it’s a speedometer.

Rebecca was my navigator. We were in the large print class. Very nice lady, very educated and accomplished. She told me a bit about her family, where they’ve lived, and about her vision impairment. She has some permanent loss, but through the miracle of modern technology she shouldn’t lose any more.

So we hit the road. Skip sent us off one at a time, based on the light crossing Colfax. That way, nobody would be able to follow the leader, we’d all have to do our own navigating. The route was pretty simple, taking us through Golden Gate Canyon, Blackhawk and Central City, Evergreen. We missed one turn, because it wasn’t signed very well, but I had the impression everybody else missed it too. We caught up to Ross here; he figured it out before we did.

It was when we got on to 285 that things went south. The speedometer app went a bit haywire, showing a speed that was clearly wrong. It also quit counting the miles. I tried to remember what the trip odometer read when we were trying to reset it. So I wasn’t sure I had the right number, and without the right number, we wouldn’t stand a chance of winning.

The rally ended at Ferrari of Denver, one of the many sponsors of the rally. There we had a light lunch of fruit and small sandwiches. When we checked in with Skip, he gave us a trivia quiz to use in case we needed to break a tie. I think we got two or three of the fifteen questions correct. As a Lotus owner, I should have gotten another one – what does ACBC stand for. I didn’t know the A.

After we ate, we had a little award ceremony. Top three finishers in each class got trophies. Ross suggested it was like t-ball – everybody gets a trophy. But in fairness, they were clearly expecting more than a dozen participants. I heard somebody say they had magnetic signs for fifty cars.

Second Place, Large Print

In the end, we got second place in large print. I was surprised. But it turns out several people didn’t manage to find Golden Gate Canyon and ended up nearly in Boulder, so even without a good odometer we did okay.

Tomorrow is the big CP Colorado show. It’s my first time entering the car in a show, and I put it in for judging. I’ve been joking that I’ll get last place. Somebody has to be last. I understand the judging is based almost entirely on how clean the car is. I’ve been too busy to get the car detailed. It has some black marks around the rear wheels, and there’s a big blob of adhesive on the dash where the previous owner mounted his radar detector. I washed it this afternoon, got it as clean as I’ve ever gotten it before. But it’s not a show winning car. It’ll be fun anyway.

Oh, and I decided to put the hardtop on for the show. Can’t recall the last time I had the hard top on.