Valhalla does not exist.

The place I am about to mention is called by many other names—including the aforementioned—however, the single most important thing I’ve earned over the last few days has been a respect for the fragility of it all, and especially beauty.

This started to become apparent to me as I was lining up the press passes for the event in the week prior. We had been attempting to contact the Valhalla Music Festival for over two months in an effort to secure not only the passes but also the privileges that come with being able to cart a really expensive camera between a frantic crowd and a live stage show. We left emails, we left voicemails, we harassed them at the main office every fifteen minutes. Finally, after probably coming within a step of a restraining order, I was able to talk to a live human being:

“What do you mean, you don’t have press passes?”
“We’re an underground festival. What use is the media to us?”
“We’re a magazine, man! We want to do a week-long front page feature about the festival! It’s going to be amazing!”
“We don’t want publicity. Any, publicity.”
“Oh.”

My approach usually works but it became evident that this was an entirely new and different can of worms: a festival that the designers don’t want you to know about. Regardless of this aim, I figured it was still newsworthy and worth writing about.

Undeterred, I increased my personal debt a few hundred dollars and bought tickets for myself, Entertainment Editor Chip Dingo and Photo Editor Andi Von Doom. Andi was unable to come for personal reasons, so I ended up having to sell my third ticket and ride up at cost on Craigslist, something I was able to do within a matter of four hours. Bear, the purchaser, would be joined by Devil, whom I knew from my work. Devil was our link into the party: he knew people who had been coming for years and was able to help with a lot of the logistical efforts.

Packing was rushed, to say the least. My weekend bag contained a tiny kids’ tent, two blankets, two pairs of pants, two pairs of shorts, three t-shirts, two sweaters, boots and shoes, my winter jacket and 4 kilograms of assorted granola and nuts. I also brought half an ounce of Calgary-grown organic Grapefruit, six packs of rolling papers, a grinder and a pair of retardo-huge raver sunglasses.

The first hiccup came as Chip and I drove to pick up Bear. Rolling up Calgary’s Centre St. bridge, an asshole traffic cop caught us going 17 kilometers over the limit. After a very tense apology (“Oh, I’m sorry officer, I was accelerating up the hill and keeping with traffic flow and wasn’t watching my speed!”), we were let off with a $110 ticket. Undeterred, we crammed Bear’s stuff into the back of the tiny Volkswagen we were riding up in and went to pick up our third compatriot, Devil, who had thankfully packed near nothing.

It was around a seven-hour drive into the Rockies and one worth doing if only for the scenery. We went in via Invermere and out through Fernie—which was considerably faster, perhaps an hour less. At any rate, the plan was to leave the car in a nearby town and hitchhike in, avoiding the line into the event, which is often in excess of six to eight hours. Fortunately, coming a day early had helped (and cost $20 a head) and thus we were able to drive directly into the festival in less than twenty minutes.

Arriving at Valhalla is a scene like no other. It’s like the first half-hour of The Warriors crossed with Mad Max and with Hippie Dust leisurely sprinkled about. There are people dressed up like angels, fairies, demons, succubae, Naruto characters, college Halloween frat parties, candy kid ravers, anarco-primitivists and post-functionalists. People arrive in groups and set up massive camps with identifying markers and interesting things to invite other campers in. There were buses with patios on the roof and a camper trailer where a lady referred only to as Grandma would give daily hugs to anyone wanting one.

The participants of Valhalla have lost the protection of their “coolness” and pretension. They are part of a bigger event, and having people talk to you is more important than creating a secure façade for everyone to marvel at. People tend to want to talk to you more when you resemble a floating dinosaur hear (and are tripping balls) than a sound techie. A flashing multicolored blur on the dancefloor is far more interesting to stare at than yet another person in a hoodie. Why take yourself so seriously when nobody else is taking either you or themselves seriously? Our camp was located deep in the tenting area, so we left the car in a relatively-secure spot and moved on.

After making contact with the Invermere camp, we were kindly helped by an older gentleman named Tom, whom we would into across several many throughout the weekend.

“Do you need any help carrying anything?”
“Nah, we packed pretty light, we can probably take it…”
“…Nah! Besides, I just took some LSD and need to move.”

Tom has six camps around Valhalla and goes around to visit each one on a daily visit. He is one of the nicest and most helpful people I’ve ever met, and what’s not to love about someone older than your parents, tripping balls on some good acid?

After setting up camp, it became apparent that the tent I had brought was far too small for both Chip and myself without creating awkward homoerotic moments reminiscent of the movie Roadtrip. Luckily, one of the Invermere crowd had brought a gigantic, two-room, ten-person tent and was the only one sleeping in it. Beggars can’t be choosers, so I opted to sleep on the cold ground while Chip had the luxury of the inflatable mattress in the tiny tent.

The night was fairly low-key. The festival really doesn’t start up until Friday afternoon, so we listened to some downtempo Trance and called it a night.