Any tips for climbing Squamish Music Fest Weekend?

[squamish climber]

For one long weekend, Squamish is going to be both a rock climbing and live music mecca. The Squamish Valley Music festival starts tomorrow and if you have not heard -- it's going to be big. Over twice as big as last year from 32 acres of land to 81 this year and more than 30,000 plus daily festival goers.

Parking and getting around will be slow and difficult at times --- be prepared and be patient.

Anyone have any tips from last year on how to navigate the crowds in order to get some climbing in? Please post up.

Some of the headliners: Feat. Bruno Mars, Arcade Fire, Eminem, Sam Roberts Band, The Roots, Tune-Yards

Festival Hours of Operation:

Thursday, August 7 4:00pm – 11:30pm

Friday, August 8 1:00pm – 1:00am

Saturday, August 9 1:00pm – 1:00am

Sunday, August 10 1:00pm – 12:30am

Links:
District of Squamish site
Community Page for locals on festival
Official Squamish Valley Music Festival Site
Everything you need to know for the Squamish Valley Music Festival Peak News Magazine

Here's wishing a fun, safe, successful music festival.

[tobyfk]

Anyone have any tips from last year on how to navigate the crowds in order to get some climbing in?

Last year the big gridlock was on the Thursday, with campers arriving and registering, as the organisers had increased ticket numbers substantially without a plan to handle it. I recall it taking about two hours to drive from Britannia Beach to past the rec centre, after which the traffic eased. This year numbers are doubling again, but the organisers claim there will be no problems.

In theory campers will turn off into the Makin Lands dust bowl just before Galileo at Britannia Beach and the registration clusterfuck will be contained in there. After that they will somehow rejoin the 99 by Galileo without slowing down traffic flow (really!) and head to designated parking lots. Then be taken by bus to their lovely grass-free (*) camp sites by Walmart.

Bottom-line: no-one knows how bad it is going to be. Personally I think the district is insane to have a giant event mid-summer when the town is already at capacity. They should be dreaming up ways to get tourists here out of season instead. The supposed economic benefit is going to be much reduced by the SVMF encouraging campers to go "cash-less" with a wristband chip that only works within the festival domain, not in town.


* "Due to unforeseen circumstances during the environmental remediation of the site, there was not time to allow grass to fully take root. We looked to some alternatives and realized by laying sand in the area, it actually provides a better surface for drainage purposes in the event of rain. We're hoping our guests appreciate we went above and beyond to ensure the proper remediation of the site -- and this year embrace a beach-like attitude in the campgrounds. " http://squamishfestival.com/p/info-camp ... DLOGISTICS