Living in Canada I've seen a fair share of odd and quirky competitions (Nanaimo's Bathtub Racing comes to mind). So when I headed for Squamish today for the 50th anniversary of the Logger Sports Festival, I was expecting another comical exhibition of so-called "sports" nobody else in the world cared about. Well...
To most tourists starting out from Vancouver, the little logging town of Squamish is only a short stop on the way to Whistler. Squamish is a reputed destination for wind-surfers, rock-climbers and birding enthusiasts, but for the thousands who chose to visit on this particular weekend, the main draw was the Squamish Days Logger Sports competition -- a world championship for a group of bizarre and mostly dangerous sports involving huge logs and sharp axes.
How dangerous? How about climbing 80-feet to the top of a huge log in 15 seconds and then racing down in a series of 15-feet jumps, using nothing more than a piece of rope and spiked boots? Yes, this is a lady in case you're wondering. Men and women competed side-by-side.
If the prospect of falling to death isn't exciting enough, there's always the axe-throwing competition. Five points for the bull's eye, then four, three, two and one. This kid here was only 12, and won 2nd place in the Intermediate class against the grown men and women.
If big is beautiful, then these huge saws in the Double Hand Bucking event were the best of the day. Strength and teamwork were of utmost importance here.
Now this was a strange but historically important logger skill. Before the arrival of mechanical logging, a logger would cut little notches in the trees for insertion of springboards, on which he would then stand and cut down the top part of the tree. Nowadays this skill can hardly be seen outside of competitions.
This Obstacle Pole Chop event was somewhat of a balancing act -- except the object of balancing was the chainsaw-wielding logger himself.
As you can see the ladies competed alongside the men. Here the lady got the upper hand.
This lady didn't fare so well though and finished last, but did finish the grueling event with the crowd cheering and rallying behind her.
Now this is the event where ladies dominated -- the crowd favorite event of log rolling. The competitors kept the feet moving and tried to roll each other into the water first. Tremendous balance was on display here -- I'm sure I would have fallen off the log in two seconds even on dry land.
After the show we drove to the Squamish Spit, a famous wind-surfing and kite-surfing spot at the mouth of the estuary. The scenery was breathtaking, but what you can't see in the photo was the unbelievably fierce wind howling behind our backs. The view of the lush green estuary was worth it though.
But it is that fierce wind that makes the place a wind-sport paradise. I certainly would love to learn to kite-surf in such a beautiful environment. The big vertical rock face in the background is the Stawamus Chief, a world-class rock-climbing destination.
You can catch quite a spectacular show just standing on the sideline. I'm having a lot more respect for the kite-surfing sport after watching some of the acrobatic moves these atheletes could pull off.
We didn't stay for too long though as it was just too windy and cool even on a sunny August day. The hour-long scenic drive back to Vancouver was beautiful, even with all the highway construction going on for the 2010 Winter Olympics.
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