After getting a taste for the festival life at Sasquatch, we just knew it would be a good summer for partying. I searched high and low in streetpress and sifted through mailing lists trying to line up a killer summer of entertainment for us. Never before had we both had jobs flexible enough to allow us to take off on such a binge of multi day events and we wanted to take full advantage!
A far cry from the corporate sponsored megafest we had just attended, the next little gathering we visited was called Intention 9.5 and was held in the nearby town of Squamish. The setting was beautiful, deep in the forest on the junction of two large rivers.
It was a real home-grown type of event, we even helped set up part of the stage on the first night and put together a huge geodesic dome on the second to give us some shelter from the typically moist Squamish weather. With a relatively small crowd and a great communal kitchen, it was really easy to talk to pretty much everyone who participated. We did all kinds of workshops, watched some amazing fire twirling and of course, enjoyed some pretty cool beats. It was great to go to a bush techno party and return home feeling more recharged than the usual worn-out!
Reading the local paper, we were thrilled to see that Live-Nation had decided that Canada needed to have its own annual mega-fest and had decided to locate the first one just half an hour from us in the little town of Pemberton! WOW, The lineup was huge, the setting was amazing and we knew that we just HAD to go. Unfortunately we nearly had a heart attack when we saw the price of the tickets, for just the two of us it was going to end up costing close to $800!! Being as stubborn as I am, I knew there must be a way that we could go so after weighing up our options we eventually ended up on the setup crew.
In return for two days work setting up the campground, we got ourselves free tickets and camping passes and headed off to enjoy ourselves. What a strange sight we saw as we arrived. Having set up our own gear a few days prior and headed back to Whistler to our day jobs, we returned to the festival at around midnight the night before, to find a scene reminiscent of hurricane Katrina or some other mass disaster. Thousands of people were strewn along the tarmac of the local airstrip dragging coolers tents and sleeping bags, trying to climb onto rows of school busses! Somebody had decided it would be a good idea to park cars at the airstrip and then bus festival goers to the camping area since there would be no cars allowed in the campground.
NOT a good idea, given the attendance was around 40,000. It took almost a day to sort out the mayhem and Justine and I were suddenly ever so happy to have volunteered for the setup crew as we had our own separate campground which we drove straight to and rolled into bed. The rest of the festival proved to be a little better organised and we were treated to some amazing performances including Nine Inch Nails, Wolfmother, Tom Petty, Dj Shadow, The Crystal Method and so many others.
We also saw probably the best tribute to North American excess ever....an air-conditioned tent, I guess I was a little sickened, but at the same time pretty damn impressed! It was a huge 'boiler-room' style deal with three bars, they even had waterfalls behind the bars. We have pretty fond memories of sitting out the front sipping mojito's in the sun! There was some pretty random stuff there too, one night just as we were about to leave, a bunch of burlesque dancers popped out onto the stage and did a performance. We also had a very crazy time one evening when we ended up (can't remember how, in my state of inebriation) on the back of a golf cart driven by a french traveller, speeding all around the festival, weaving in and out of drunken participants and a sea of discarded water bottles.
Some of the best times we had were chilling out in the volunteer campground at the airstrip chatting to other cool people that had volunteered, something about sitting on an airstrip drinking vietnamese coffee that made it extra special!
After the festival, we decided that we would avoid the traffic ques and headed in the opposite direction to do a bit of exploring. With two hitch-hikers on board, we headed out to the beautiful Joffre Lakes. 'A bit of exploring' suddenly turned into several hours of difficult hiking over tree roots and boulders, which in hindsight, was probably not the best idea when hung over, tired and without anything resembling appropriate footwear. The uphill struggle was well worth it when we arrived at one of the beautiful top lakes complete with glacier behind.
A perfect way to remove 3 days of festival grime, damn cold tho!!
After barely recovering from Pemberton, we made a last minute decision to head East for Shambhala. It was gonna be tight since it was less than two weeks in between, but we had heard too many good things about this festival to miss out. So we piled a couple of our Whistler buddies, Kristy and Carla into the car and made the ~10 hour pilgrimmage to Nelson BC. The trip almost ended in disaster before it began when a motorcycle coming the opposite way on a remote stretch of highway swerved abruptly into our lane, then back again and promptly dumped its two riders onto the tarmac. We skidded to a halt and leapt out, a little unsure of what to do first, assist the injured riders or flag down the traffic that was approaching at high speed. After freaking out that there was no cell phone coverage, things started to look up when a truck arrived that I figured would have a radio. However, still no luck as we were deep in the mountains between two very small towns. Luckily the injuries did not seem to be life threatening, just extremely painful and one of the passing cars helped us out by speeding to the next town to call for help. An hour or so later the injured couple were loaded in the ambulance and after giving a police report, we were on our way again.
We were greeted with probably the best festival venue I have seen in my lifetime. Acres of beautiful rainforest and a lovely river running through the middle. There were 6 stages dispersed through the forest and a labrynth of trails linking them up, even a stage on the banks of the river! The festival had a great laid back vibe, you could pretty much camp anywhere you wanted, those who arrived early had beautiful spots under the shady rainforest trees. It was pretty cool to see hundreds of people sunbathing on camp chairs in the river with a prime view of the stage. There was great cheap food and all kinds of crazy stuff to stumble upon in the forest, we spent so much time just exploring.
The weather was a little mean to us, as it rained quite a bit but in some strange way it added to the experience. The shroud of fog that covered everything one evening made things pretty mysterious, particularly when costumed individuals would seem to materialise before you! People really loved to dress up for this one which was really a sight to see. It was also a pretty intense experience to be in a field between two mountain ranges with thousands of other festival goers, staring in awe at the sky as huge jolts of forked lightning lit up the sky all around, I felt very small cowering in a portaloo for shelter from the torrential downpour, watching full grown trees explode into flames along the ridge. The beats never stopped though, woah...who needs lasers!
Next on the list was the big one, an event I have wanted to attend for many years and am happy to say, completely surpassed any and all expectations we might have had! Our good friend Shannon had come over from Australia to join us and brought his mate Jason along for the ride. We spent a couple of days giving them an action packed tour of Whistler (I remember one crazy day when we managed to fit a cheese rolling festival, alpine hike, mountaintop BBQ, sunset swim in the lake and a full moon party all into the same day) before loading up the car and heading South to Nevada in the USA for the Burning Man Festival.
Our meandering trip through four states was a load of fun as we pillaged Opp shops and dollar stores far and wide, buying up all the costumes and supplies we could fit in the car (and plenty we really couldn't or rather shouldn't have). There were four of us packed into our rusty little toyota camry, add enough water to last 4 people a week in the desert and the poor little car was riding on the bumpstops from Oregon, through the top corner of California and all the way to Nevada! I couldn't help but laugh as the ticket collector, unable to see Justine buried under a pile of crap in the back seat, only asked us for 3 tickets. Perhaps he was distracted by the flowers that had appeared all over the car somewhere around Grants Pass, Oregon!
To try and explain 'the burn' is near impossible, which is probably why nothing could ever really prepare anybody, including us, for their first time. The scale of the event is phenomenal. It is a temporary city built on a salt plain in the desert, and for the duration of the 1 week event, it is the 3rd largest city in Nevada.
Yes, I said city, there are streets, a post office, several newspapers, radio stations and of course, the 50,000 or so residents. It is large enough that there is even aerial photos of the site on google earth! There is also the most mind blowing array of insane activities, theme camps and art installations to keep you occupied for the week. We were camping with a long running theme camp The Lost Penguins and our contribution to the community was to serve wine, chocolate and snow-cones in our cafe (please note that serving snow-cones in a desert can lead to extreme popularity).
Once at the event, you are not allowed to use money so all participants are expected to contribute something into the community to make the 'gift economy' work. There is not really any rules, and so what is on offer is as varied and unusual as the crowd that attends and ranges from basic services to entertainment to the downright bizarre! Ladies, sick of sitting on those dirty portaloo seats? Just visit the 'Amazing pee-funnel camp'. We had many a free drink in bars that ranged from western style saloons, to a giant aeroplane and even a 20 foot high breast! We skated in circles at the roller disco, rode on mutant vehicles, sampled mystery morsels at the 'snack food glory hole', and stared in awe at the giant topless-only see-saw.
Yep, that is actually a Segway on the skating rink!
We saw flying trapeeze artists at one of the three circuses, climbed the opulent temple, ghasped with the expectation of a major injury at the 'bike jousting'. I even found a camp giving away chiropractic adjustments. We did stop short however, of the chocolate enema but it is good to know, that should you ever want to, that you could! Likewise, we decided to leave the 'Ipecac cocktail hour - Ladies and gentleman, bring a cup and a bucket' and the 'Tea-baggers ball' to try another day....
Just incase you began to doubt your own eyes...
The city is so large, you could never hope to explore it all before it disappears again a week later. It was great to just grab a bike and ride away into the distance sometimes, just to see what you would discover out on the playa.
I could however, just have easily been happy sitting for the week in the cafe watching random things occur outside. It seemed every time you looked out onto the 'playa' there was something totally random going on that you had not seen before....Be it a flame-shooting dragon shaped car, nude trampolinist, amazing and unique art installation, or even the 15-20,000 topless chicks on bikes cruising past for the 'critical tits' bike ride. Even within the cafe you were not safe, I remember being randomly attacked by around 150 zombies who dispersed again almost as quickly as they came. The next day, the camp was overrun with french maids obsessively cleaning the playa dust from everything in site!
Justine rides a giant cock!
Shannon entertaining us out the front of our camp one evening.
The festival culminates with the burning of a 40 foot wooden man in the centre of the city. The burning of the man was incredible. Tens of thousands of costumed festival goers rushed towards the burning figure as it collapsed and proceeded to run in circles around it. Running around the fire is somewhat of a virgin's initiation to the festival and I have to say my heart was racing as we did our best not to get toasted alive by the immense heat coming off the inferno.
Dressed in a cat-suit, Shannon frolics in the firelight!
It was also an interesting contrast to the final 'temple night' when an amazingly intricate wooden temple was torched. It was very humbling to see so many people be completely silent for so long as it burnt.
The peace was soon broken though, as mother nature unleashed with one of her infamous dust storms. The kind where you need a respirator and goggles just to be able to function! Suddenly thousands were wandering lost in the storm trying in vain to find their camps. Justine and I managed to grab two of the public 'yellow bikes' and had a hilarious time riding blindly around in the dust searching for a portaloo. Our delight on finding one at last, soon turned to dismay when we realised that we had been going in the opposite direction to our camp and had quite a ride to get home again.
Bicycles and art-cars like this one, are the main forms or transport in Black Rock City
It was rather strange to leave the desert and suddenly find that you had to worry about those inconvenient little things like money, showering and wearing 'normal' clothes again. The look on the face of the hotel staff in Reno was pretty funny as we checked in, still in costume and coated in playa dust. We didn't care though, all we wanted was a hot shower.
The photos of this event do not do it justice, but check the rest out here anyway as they are still pretty amazing!
If you still can't get enough of the madness and mayhem, check out these shots by photographer Scott London.
For probably our last event of the summer, we headed off to Squamish again, to another low key type of do in the forest called Cedar Sky. Despite the pouring rain, we were delighted to arrive at a beautiful camping area deep in the forest. All the trees were draped with moss and gave the whole thing a very enchanted feel.
Even with the rainy weather, I think we had probably one of the best nights of the year, dancing away to some very cool psytrance for most of the night. I suppose we were just very well practiced by now and it was really nice to catch up with some buddies from the Intention event we had visited earlier in the year. The hangover the next day was instantly cured when the clouds parted and we were able to pack up and be on our way in glorious sunshine. Better late than never I suppose!
