Date:         Wed, 22 May 1996 17:26:47 -0700 (PDT)
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         "Tobin T. Copley" <tobin@vcn.bc.ca>
Subject:      Vancouver VW Show vs. Rockslide

On Tue, 21 May 1996, Glen Buhlmann wrote:

> So did Martha and Tobin make it to the show or did the rain scare you away?

Well, gee, Christa and I *meant* to get to the show, but she got her 
shifts switched around at the last minute so we suddenly had Saturday 
night free.  Yippee!  We piled into the westy and putted up to Whistler 
for the night.  The next morning, we'd just head back down and take in 
the show, then C would go to work that night.

That was the plan.

At 8:15 Sunday morning, a few million pounds of rock decided to let go of 
a rock face above the Sea-to-Sky (a.k.a. Scream and Slide; Scream and 
Die; various other permutations) highway near the salt sheds in the 
Cheakamus Canyon, burying maybe 100 yards of the highway under 45-60 feet 
of rock.  I *knew* I should have made those off-road mods to the bus...  ;-)

We spent a very pleasant Sunday drinking beer in the hot tub at the 
Chateau Whistler waiting for word on the road.  72 hours at least, they 
said.  Geez, stranded in a hot tub; life's rough!

We got up at 4:30 Monday morning planning to drive the *long* way (the 
only other way) out of Whistler--a 10 hour drive north through the 
mountains to Lillooet, then south down the Fraser Canyon, then west up 
the Fraser Valley.  A substantial increase from the usual 1.5 - 2 drive 
back from Whistler.  When we checked with the hotel people, we found that 
the highways folks had managed to punch one lane through it just a couple 
of hours earlier.  Nobody on the road, and we made it home in 1.5 hours 
(then to bed!).

BTW, rather impressive rock slide: one rock was about the size of a 4 
bedroom house!  It's Wednesday when I write this, and they closed the 
road this morning again--another slide in the same area.  And they're 
going to be closing the road during the day for the next 
gods-know-how-long to let the blasters to their thing.  Hey Bradley: 
wanna job?

I'll point the slide out to the Inuvik trekkers: we're driving the 
Sea-to-Sky highway for the start of the trip--hard hats optional!

Tobin 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tobin T. Copley              VW Busses to Inuvik!        =============  
(604) 689-2660            www.chaco.com/~coyote/trek    /_| |__||__| :| putta
tobin@vcn.bc.ca                 July 22-Aug 14 96      O|             | putta
                                   JOIN US!             '-()-------()-' 
Circum-continental USA, Mexico, Canada 15,000 miles   '76 VW Camper! (Mango)