The ice on Lake Champlain has finally gotten thick enough that the Sports Car Club of Vermont was able to hold our first ice time trial today (lots of snow this year has insulated the lake ice and made it impossible until now). I showed up with the iX and was one of two BMWs to make an appearance amid the usual armada of Subarus and a few Audis:

I was running on studded winter tires, which make a huge difference on the ice, especially when coupled with AWD. Several guys in the club that take their ice racing to the next level like to run bolt tires like this:

and my favorite extreme studs, like this:

Those last tires were shared between two different cars, one of which earned fastest time of the day by a whopping 15 seconds. The driver reported that it was like driving on rails where the car makes its own rails. The first set was on a Miata that not only was the second fastest car in attendance, but kept itself busy pulling out Subarus that got stuck in the snow.
Here's a video of my fastest run:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEeqA7D2VfA
Fun times! I hope we can get another one in next weekend!

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Dave
'91 325iX

Here are a couple more pics a friend took. All the flying snow indicates that I messed up and slid off-line into the deep stuff, but it makes for cool pictures:



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Dave
'91 325iX

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Dave_G
Here are a couple more pics a friend took. All the flying snow indicates that I messed up and slid off-line into the deep stuff, but it makes for cool pictures:

Yeahh, Dave! you old snow thrower you...

It's so hard for me to think of driving the lake though; I was just cruising it in a speed boat

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Dave_G
The ice on Lake Champlain has finally gotten thick enough that the Sports Car Club of Vermont was able to hold our first ice time trial today (lots of snow this year has insulated the lake ice and made it impossible until now). I showed up with the iX and was one of two BMWs to make an appearance amid the usual armada of Subarus and a few Audis:

I was running on studded winter tires, which make a huge difference on the ice, especially when coupled with AWD. Several guys in the club that take their ice racing to the next level like to run bolt tires like this:

and my favorite extreme studs, like this:

Those last tires were shared between two different cars, one of which earned fastest time of the day by a whopping 15 seconds. The driver reported that it was like driving on rails where the car makes its own rails. The first set was on a Miata that not only was the second fastest car in attendance, but kept itself busy pulling out Subarus that got stuck in the snow.
Here's a video of my fastest run:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEeqA7D2VfA
Fun times! I hope we can get another one in next weekend!

Dave, what's that clicking noise, the key ring thingy?

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rkj
Dave, what's that clicking noise, the key ring thingy?

I think it was a loose camera mount.

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Dave
'91 325iX

Nice!

What kind of camera and mount are you using?

You're not using those through-bolted ice tires, are you? I mean yours are normal street-studs, right?

Those can be real scary too. They work great on glare ice, but if you stray off line into the deep snow then the studs aren't long enough to reach through into the ice and suddenly you've got a whole lot less traction.

Running on just normal rubber winter tires, it's great to have other studded cars chew up the ice for you first. But that can be nasty too if you wander just a bit off the tractionized racing line and find yourself instead on the glass smooth surface where none of the studded cars have been yet.

At least the snowbanks looked nice and soft, so you're unlikely to do any damage if you do get off line.

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Ferdinand
What kind of camera and mount are you using?

It was just my phone and the car mount it came with! I'm a photography enthusiast with a fairly large array of cameras and lenses, but what they are putting into phones these days is getting good enough that often it's easier just to leave all the gear at home and stick the phone on the dash.

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You're not using those through-bolted ice tires, are you? I mean yours are normal street-studs, right?

Yeah, I'm just on street studs. On ice, the tires make such a difference that our car classes are based strictly on studded/unstudded and FWD/RWD/AWD. The super-stud cars get their own class.

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Those can be real scary too. They work great on glare ice, but if you stray off line into the deep snow then the studs aren't long enough to reach through into the ice and suddenly you've got a whole lot less traction.

If you're talking about bolt tires, yes. Mostly that's because the bolts are most effective if they're installed on hard, clapped-out old tires that would be otherwise useless. The hardness of the rubber keeps the bolts from squirming around. So if you get into deep enough snow that he studs can't reach the ice, you're stuck. But street studs are different. They are usually installed in good, full-tread winter tires that are perfectly capable in deep snow.

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Running on just normal rubber winter tires, it's great to have other studded cars chew up the ice for you first. But that can be nasty too if you wander just a bit off the tractionized racing line and find yourself instead on the glass smooth surface where none of the studded cars have been yet.

Yeah, that's why we try to run the studded cars first. They chew up the ice to give the unstudded cars a little more grip. But even then, after many runs of unstudded tires have gone through and polished the surface, it starts getting slick again. Lots of the unstudded cars were having trouble with a couple of the sharper turns at the end of the course.

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Dave
'91 325iX

Hey Dave, Where abouts is that event taking place. Our summer house is Willsboro point, new york, about directly across from Burlington. I'm going to say that the lake is the widest there but not really sure of that.

Rick

It's on Mallett's Bay in Colchester, a little north of Burlington. The bay is large and sheltered, and usually has more reliable ice than the broad lake. Here's a Google map: Mallett's Bay

It's not far from Willsboro Point as the crow flies, but it would take a bit of a drive and ferry ride to get there. (The Burlington and Charlotte ferries are closed for the winter, and I don't think I would recommend trying to drive across the whole lake! )

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Dave
'91 325iX

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Dave_G
It's on Mallett's Bay in Colchester, a little north of Burlington. The bay is large and sheltered, and usually has more reliable ice than the broad lake. Here's a Google map: Mallett's Bay

It's not far from Willsboro Point as the crow flies, but it would take a bit of a drive and ferry ride to get there. (The Burlington and Charlotte ferries are closed for the winter, and I don't think I would recommend trying to drive across the whole lake! )

Alright, thanks for that. I see now, the event was in a bay and not in the lakes larger area, I couldn't imagine that whole expanse being frozen enough to drive on although I know it Has happened in the past at some point; Janet was telling me she did hear it did happen a long time ago, people were driving to Burlington from Willsboro. Crazy, right?