Thunder In The Mountains

(For more photos of this event, click on Picture Gallery to the left.)

August 1st Marga and I drove up to beautiful Whistler, British Columbia, Canada for the British Columbia Corvette Club's Thunder In The Mountains. A major rockslide three days prior to the event, totally closed the Sea To Sky Highway from Vancouver to Whistler, requiring a 120 mile, four hour detour to the east and north through Lilliooet and Pemberton. A timely phone call from one of the BCCC members before we left home, alerted us to the detour, and thus saved us an extra two hours. In spite of the extra miles, it was a beautiful drive, that we otherwise wouldn't have taken. 

Once in Whistler we were warmly greeted by the members of the BCCC, who put on a really fun weekend. In spite of the fact that a number of Corvettes, particularly the older ones, did not make the trip up because of the long detour, we still had a great time. Friday evening we registered and met the other attendees at a Meet & Greet. Saturday morning we gathered in the upper village in front of the Fairmont Chateau Hotel for a Show & Shine. A very pretty setting for some truly beautiful cars. Although we didn't trophy in the car show, we still had a great time. Saturday evening was a banquet dinner in the Whistler Convention Center, with awards for the car show, door prizes, and a silent auction benifitting BC Breast Cancer Research. 
 
Sunday Morning it was out to the Pemberton Airport for an AutoCross. The committee set up a great course, with both very fast sections and some very tight transitions. Everyone got six timed runs, plus there were non-timed fun runs for those who had never Auto Crossed before. It was a great setiing, surrounded by snow capped mountains, on a very challenging course. The new Michelin Pilot Sports and Pfadt Racing Technology adjustable shocks, did everything I hoped they would. The car handled great and I was able to take a Second Place Trophy, missing first by less than a second and a half, to the club's racing director who designed the course and had driven it a number of years.

We then stayed in Whistler for an additional week, played golf on some fabulous courses, and rode the Gondola and Chair Lift to the top of Whistler Mountain. At 9,000 feet, well above the tree line, it was an incredible view everywhere you looked. Whistler will be the site of the 2010 Winter Olympics and you could see the new Bobsled and Luge Track, and all the construction in preparation for the games.

On the way home we stopped for the day at the Abbottsford International Airshow. We saw some fantastic aircraft, both old and new, including a Boeing B-52H which I took delivery of, in 1961, brand new, from Boeing Witchita, for the Strategic Air Command Bomber Wing we were just establishing at Minot Air Force Base, in Minot North Dakota. The B-52 Aircraft Commander, who flew it up to Abbottsford from Barksdale AFB in Louisiana, had not yet been born then. We talked for a while about B-52 operations, then and now, and then it was time for the flying displays. There were old aircraft, mostly military, and the newest front line fighters. There were demonstrations by both USAF, US Navy and Canadian Air Force pilots, highlighted by the USAF Thunderbirds, and concludind with the Canadian Snowbirds.

The Members of the BCCC were wonderful hosts, and indeed all the Canadians we met were warm and friendly. We are looking forward to welcoming a number of the BCCC members to our Corvette Weekend next year so we can return the hospitality. All in all a wonderful visit to our northern neighbors, eh?