Hagerty Spring Thaw – trip summary

Last weekend I took the TA on the Hagerty Spring Thaw. This is an annual event put on by a small company in Squamish, BC, Canada, running approximately 75 pre-1975 cars through the secondary highways of the province. There is some amazing scenery in the area. Official info on the company & event is at their website here: http://madeinczechoslovakia.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/tatra-603-brochure-1.jpg.

This is the 5th time I’ve entered, but the first in the Traction. It only got running late last fall, and prior to the weekend I had only managed to put on ~600 km, with the longest trip being under 150 km. This trip was a big step up, with the total route ending up over 1,300 km, with plenty of elevation changes thanks to those mountains that provide the nice scenery. Here are a couple of highway profiles to illustrate:

My UK geography isn’t so great, but isn’t the highest peak around 1,350 m?

Tractions aren’t very common in the area, so I was the only one entered. The only other Citroen was a 2CV, and the overall group is pretty diverse.

With 75 teams, the full crowd takes up quite a bit of room.

Since these cars aren’t very common, it seemed that at almost every stop I had someone come up to ask about the car and take a look. This was a pretty frequent scenario.

Between the distance, elevation, and weather, it was a real test of the car and all the work I’ve had done over the last year. The event is called the Spring Thaw for a reason, and we did see snow.

Still, the car took everything thrown at it and it exceeded my expectations. My mechanic was one of the other entries, and between event sponsors and my own car club membership I had 400 km of towing if necessary, but in the end the car needed nothing more than 0.5L of oil despite running 6 h/d, three days running, generally between 85-95 km/h. It will need some minor repairs, but I may have been feeling worse than the car, with noise and steering effort taking their toll.

It was a great experience though, and the roads & company more than made up for the effort. After that I think I’d be comfortable driving the car anywhere except perhaps Vancouver rush-hour traffic.