A hillclimb is a time trial event. Which means the race consists of cars running a closed course against the clock. All the cars run the road one at a time. The car with the fastest time to complete the course wins. Time trials are different from the more familiar circle track racing in which all the cars are on the track at the same time all trying to get to the front. In Hillclimbing it is just you and the car trying for the best time up the road. There is a start and a finish. And timing is controlled electronically. Most Hillclimbs are held at ski areas that have paved access roads that wind their way to the top of the mountain. But some roads are mountain roads built so tourists and sightseers could drive up the mountain and see the view from the top without physically climbing the mountain. The average Road leingh is about 3 miles long. Though Mount Washington in New Hampshire is almost eight miles long. And the road up Pikes Peak in Colorado is twelve miles long. The Sport of Automobile Hillclimbing can be found all over the world. At these events you can find a wide range of drivers, from you amateur weekend hobbyist driving their everyday car, to famous profesional racing drivers with seemingly unlimited budgets, all at the same event!

The cars found at a hillclimb vary from cars driven everyday, back and forth to work, to purpose built "hillclimb Specials". Hillclimbs are considered an amateur sport. Most drivers build, own and maintain their own cars. It is a true grassroots motorsport. There is a real challenge in racing up a mountain. You are you racing up a very narrow, very steep and very twisty road. Where the slightest mistake or loss of concentration can send you crashing over the edge. Hillclimb events has a similar appeal to spectators as Rallying, because these are mostly real cars, just like the ones they drive, racing up, narrow, winding roads, very fast. At some events cars can reach over 100 mph and genarally average over 50 mph. It is a very exciting sport to watch, and even more exciting to participate. In June, 1999, I was invited to Mt. Washington to participate in what the organizers call "press day". This is when they invite members of the media up to the hill to talk with drivers, take photo's and video and get a first hand look at what it is like to race up the mountain. Tom Eastman, a reporter for "The Mountain Ear" newspaper, a local publication for the Mount Washington region, Had a few rides up the auto-road with me in my car.
I have attached the article he wrote about his experience.


 
    My Right Foot Pounded the floor in repeated, desperate attempts to hit the brakes as the screaming roar of the engine pounded in my ears and the world rushed by in a dizzying blur.

Only trouble was, I was riding on the passenger side of the souped up, turbo-charged Dodge Omni race car, not the driver's side. I had no control at all - despite all my foot stomping efforts, there were no brakes, clutch or gas pedal on my side of the front-wheel drive car as we skidded, shimmied and growled our way around the twisting corners of the Mount Washington Auto Road this past june 11th. I couldn't stop the car - and like some wildly flailing whirleygig, I couldn't stop my leg, either. It was all part  of Audi-Mt. Washington Hillclimb Media Day this past June 11, and the drivers were giv-ing we foolish members of the media the ride of our lives by taking us each for rides up different sections of the eight-mile long, base-to-summit Auto Road. The idea was to give us an idea of what the drivers go through when they compete in the "Climb to the Clouds" Hillclimb, which this year is set for Sunday, June 27, with practice runs Friday and Saturday, June 25 and 26.     Having Covered the Race safely from the sidelines every year since it was reactivated in 1990, I was game to finally find out what it's like to fight the G forces and grind my way in a race car up the Rockpile. I rode twice with driver Brian Goss of Concord in his Omni from the Halfway point of the road, past the Horn and on up to Signal Corps. Daring fate, I then rode once with Lance Smith of Hinesburg, Vt., from the bottom of the Winter Cutoff up the 5-Mile Grade, around Cragway Turn to the 6-Mile Park in his $300,000 Mitsubishi 285 hp Lancer Evolution 5. Having survived those rides, I can now honestly report what I previously only suspected: Namely, these seemingly mild-man-nered and very-together men and women drivers who compete in the nation's oldest motorsports event every June are, well ..~ nuts!    The first ride up with Goss, I fool-ishly was under the impression that I had some control over the car, let alone my fate. Once I let go of that fantasy and settled hack in and left the driving to Goss our next time up, however, and to Smith on my third trip, I had to admit - it was almost fun. Thrilling? Yes. Scary? Yep. Fun? Well

After our first ride, I was getting ready to say my thankyous and get out of the car when Goss said, "Want to go again?!?" That's when my logic kicked in. hey, it was Media Day, for crying out loud! relax. No way are they going to push it to the max and risk getting one of us media types killed! Enjoy the ride. It didn't totally work - I was still scared on my subsequent two runs, but I at least was able to ask a few half-intelligent questions as we hit the metal and went for it. "Stay Out Of The Drivers Way" I told myself, "and try not to notice those rock walls, steep drop-offs and God knows what else there is off the side of the road."It was late afternoon, with the set-ting sun shining directly in our eyes as we roared up the road the second ride. "No problem, who needs to see the road to drive? Don't worry. Be numb," I repeated in my head with Zen-like calmness. "Fate is fate. If you go off, so what? When your time comes, it comes - nothing you can do about it!" "Your adrenaline is pumping and all when you drive, certainly," Goss calm-ly explained after we screeched to a halt at the turnoff at the area known as Signal Corps, after our second ride, "but you can't let yourself look off the side of a road. That's what a lot of peo-ple make the mistake of doing when they ride with you as passengers - they go, 'Oh my God - look at that drop off !"  Me, I'm just following the road. For me, it's just a road like going down a regular street- forget about that there's a 100-foot-drop off the side of the road over there." Right - a 7.4-mile long regular street that has 100 corners, a paved (65 percent) and hardpacked gravel surface (35 percent) that favors one type of tires for one surface but not the other. A regular street that twists and climbs at an average grade of 12 percent and a maximum grade of 18 percent as it climbs a total of 4723 feet. Compare that to the country's other major hillclimb,  the  Pike's Peak Hillclimb, which will he held in Colorado Springs, Colorado, the same week as the Mt. Washington race.

First held 12 years after the Mt. Washington Race in 1916, Pike's climbs 4708 feet at an average grade of 7 percent and at a maximum grade of 10 percent on an all-gravel surface. Pikes course is longer at 12.42 miles, and it also has more turns with 156. The speed record for Pike's is 130 mph, set in 1994 by Rod Millen driving a Toyota Celica while setting an overall course record of 10 minutes, 4.06 sec-onds. Mt. Washington's record belongs to Jerry Driscoll, a 57-year-old grand-father and ex-heart patient who set the record of 110 mph in the speed trap while winning his class and finishing second overall on his 55th birthday at the 1997 Mt. Washington Hillclimb in his homebuilt 400 hp Patriot Hillclimb Special. (Driscoll has upgraded the hp to 700 for this year's race. He hopes to better his speed mark).

    The course record for Mt. Washington is 6 minutes, 41.99 sec-onds, set in 1998 by two-time winner and Canadian National Rally car champion Frank Sprongl in his four-wheel drive 350 hp Audo Quattro S-2, aver-aging 66.27 miles per hour. Weather permitting, he expects to break that record this year by turning in times "in the 6:30s."

We did'nt nearly go that fast on any of our three rides on Media Day - maybe "only" 45 to 55 mph. On our final drive up the 5-Mile Grade past Cragway Turn, driver Lance Smith noted he was going at "only 70 percent." That hardly came as comforting news, as the Mitsubishi's rear end sashayed back and forth as we roared up the shelf of the 5-mile grade to Cragway turn. Smith, a renowned rally car builder, said he was using the media drive as "as a practice to get to know the road better. "We're really squirrely, aren't we?" I said as we shimmied on the gravel, with Wildcat - and a steep drop-off - off to our left, on the east. "Yeah," said the blond-haired, mus-tachioed 1998 North American -Rally Cup winner over the helmeted speaker, "these tires are really all crap on this dirt surface and all wrong for today's driving conditions."

Great. Wrong tires. And Cragway Turn just ahead! Smith intentionally let the rear end of the car slide out to the left as we made the hard right turn around Cragway. I'm told by spectators watch-ing us make the turn that my jaw had dropped and my mouth was wide open. Ha-HAAA! Fun.

Were we Kings of the Hill? It sure felt like it - even if we were just along for the ride. Now if I can just get the use of my right leg back…