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My Palomar Hill Climb It was the winter of 73-4 and I was working in southern California for a few months. I had a weekend with nothing to do and decided to drive inland and visit the Mt. Palomar Observatory which I had heard about all my life. On the map it looked like it was only about 60 miles inland from where I was living in Carlsbad. The weather on the coast was the usual SoCal winter day, grey and chilly, but nothing like what I thought of as winter, so I set off with little thought about the fact that it would get colder as I got up into the mountains. I was driving my first type 3, a dark blue 68 FI squareback. The first 40 miles were flat, or slightly rolling, but eventually I ended up on a 2-lane road that seemed like a gentle roller coaster ride, up & down, up & down, thru a nicely wooded area. Getting up into the mountains, the grey had turned into light drizzle. I realized it was getting colder when sometimes the drizzle turned to snow, then back to rain. Eventually I realized that at the peak of the road it would be snowing, while in the valleys it was still raining. So on I drove, up into snow, down into rain, up into snow, down into rain. Apparently the road was slowly making its way upward, because I eventually left the rain behind and it was just snowing, not hard, but just a bit. I'm surrounded by forest and trees. All very quiet and no signs at all of any human population other than the road, and I appeared to be the only car on this road. Suddenly I crested another hill and there were scattered cars parked on both sides of the road. Now thie seemed really strange because there was no sign that there was anything here for anyone to want to stop to see. There were also people walking along the road, so I assumed there must be some attraction, but there was nothing to be seen back in the woods and no signs for anything. I had actually been watching for signs for the last 10-15 miles and had seen nothing. I figured these people were going somewhere up ahead and I would eventually pass whatever brought them all here. Down another valley and up to another crest. Now there are lots of cars on both side of the road and more people walking, but they seem to be walking in both directions. There's still no sign of anything that would have attracted them here. I'm still confused by this, but I resolve to just drive on, slowly, because of all the pedestrian traffic. Down a valley and back up to the next crest and I find cars stopped in my lane in front of me. I stop. I wait. We move slowly forward. More cars pile up behind me. The cars are parked solid on both sides of the road by now and there is a continuous crowd of foot traffic moving both ways on both sides of the road. At the next crest in the road, I can see that we have about 1/4 mile of almost stalled traffic ahead of me and I'm now pinned in. I regret deciding to make this trip, but I'm glad that I have plenty of gas and time, so I settle in and play the waiting game. Slowly I move forward with the traffic. Ahead I can see that the road turns to the right and disappears. Cars make that corner slowly and disappear, I can also see that there are cars coming from the other direction and they often seem to find empty spaces to the sides of the road and park. As I get closer, I suddenly realize that each of the cars ahead of me that I had watched disappear, reappear a minute or 2 later coming back the other way. I can't imagine what I've gottem myself in to, but no one appears to be as annoyed as I'm beginning to feel, so I calm down and stick with the line. It's still lightly snowing. Finally, I'm up to the corner and can see what's ahead. After the right turn, the road runs level for about 50 feet and then takes a sharp turn upward, going straight ahead and medium steep for about 1/2 mile. There are 4-5 cars ahead of me. There are NO cars on the inclined part of the road, but there are lots of people walking up and down both sides. I watch as the car at the front of our line rolls itself onto the start of the incline, stops, revvs the engine a few times, pops the clutch and fishtails to no effect. He tries this several times, gives up, and turns around. As he gives up his place, each car behind him moves forward as the new lead car moves onto the slope and stops in preparation for the hill climb attempt. I stay back at the apex of the corner where I can watch all this. I can't believe what I'm seeing. Each person in turn makes exactly the same mistake, learning nothing from the failures they just watched. Each one drives onto the beginning of the slope and actually applies their brakes and stops. I stay back. Behind me, the other drivers are getting pissed. They start to honk. I wait. Eventually each of the cars that had been ahead of me tried and gave up, and now the road ahead of me was clear. I drove ahead and shifted into 2nd about the time I hit the slope, coasting right over the well polished area that everyone had prepared there. I can't remember if I ever shifted into 3rd. I was worried that things might change suddenly and I didn't want to be going too fast with all the foot traffic around. About 100 yards up the hill I took a chance and glanced in my rear view mirror to see if anyone had followed my lead. The 50 ft lead-in to the slope was now packed with cars which were all atopped. I drove to the top with absolutely NO difficulty, while the pedestrians around me were actually clapping. I heard someone say, "Look, it's got a Wisconsin plate." It would have made a great VW ad, if only there had been someone there to record it. When I got to the top I expected to be able to drive on to my destination, but I found that THIS was it. The only thing at the top was the Mt. Palomar Observatory and a huge empty parking lot. There was just one other vehicle there, an ancient red pickup, which looked like it had either been there for weeks/months, or was owned by someone who knew how to drive on snow and ice. When I left 2 hours later, we were still the only 2 vehicles in the lot. -- ******************************* Jim Adney, jadney@vwtype3.org Madison, Wisconsin, USA ******************************* ------------------------------------------------ To unsubscribe, E-mail to: <type3-off@vwtype3.org> For more help, see http://vwtype3.org/list/