Crowd shot of the terrace at the Gorge during the National concert at Sasquatch 2010
Originally uploaded by theotherlondon
Tips for attending Sasquatch Music Festival
- Showing up late Friday night is not as great an idea as you'd think. Sure we avoided the Saturday Memorial Day weekend
traffic , but the backlog of people arriving a day before the festival more than made up for any time we gained. We arrived at the highway exit just before midnight and it took 4 hours to go the last 5km to the campground entrance. We were pitching our tent as the sun rose over the Columbia River at 5am. - Try to arrive at the gates to the concert grounds before 10am. The entire campground seems to make a mass exodus to the gates between 10am and noon. Arriving at the gate just before 10am can make the difference between waiting 10 minutes in line and waiting an hour in line. If you think waiting an hour in line sounds bad now, wait until you're in the middle of it and you hear your favourite band launch into their set on the other side of the fence.
- The showers are quietest in the evening. If you can tear yourself away from the concert grounds before the shows wrap up, chances are you'll find the showers completely empty. Of course this means you're going to miss a headlining act, but these are the sacrifices we have to consider when going three days in a row without flush toilets and not many sinks and showers for thousands of people.
- Concert goers are only allowed to bring one small sealed water bottle into the concert area. Once you've finished up that bottle you're left with the options of refilling it at one of the water stations, conveniently situated with the 'Honey Buckets', or purchasing water at $4 a bottle. The smartest folks I saw brought water in collapsible water hydration packs, like the kind you bring along on a backpacking trip.
- Judging by the conversations I overheard, it seems the benefits of reserving a 'premium' campsite are well worth the additional costs. Upon our arrival I ignorantly lamented the conditions of our premium campsite until campers who had upgraded from the 'standard' sites began to pitch tents around us. I can only image what they must have encountered to be so relieved to move camp in the middle of the night to an open field with a few scattered groupings of Honey Buckets and one communal sink at each 'rest area'. [Shudder]
- Next year I think we're going to consider giving the even-more-premium 'terrace' campground a try. There were only a small number of sites in the terrace area, but I expect enough facilities for all AND campers were served free coffee and doughnuts in the morning. That said, one does have to weigh the cost of spending twice as much for a better patch of grass to sleep on.
- There's not a lot of running water around in the camping areas or the concert grounds. For the sake of your health you might want to consider biting the environmental bullet and loading up on wet wipes. Hand sanitizer is also a good idea.
- Don't forget to arrive at the gate to the concert grounds prepared to spend the whole day and ready for any kind of weather. You'll be asked to pay extra for 'in and out privileges' if you need to go back to your campsite and, personally, I think $10 is a lot of money to spend to grab a jacket.
- In 2010 there wasn't any wireless access at the Gorge (quelle horreur!), at least not that I encountered, and I did ask at the information booths. A couple of the display booths had computers with internet access for concert goers to use.
- Try the chicken chow mein. As concert food goes, it's pretty okay.
And above all... - Have a fabulous time! No matter what you have to put up with to be there, the musicians are going to make it well worth the experience.
