The Griz Daze Done

With the Mardi Gras dinner and show at the Art Station, the door to the Griz Days celebration opened a crack. With the parade Friday night the door was kicked wide open–in true Griz Style.

Minutes before the “Official� parade commenced, two streakers ran the length of the route. Naked except for their boots, they would have embraced the spirit more completely if they had at least worn Mardi Gras beads. Leaving that single fact alone, they set a raucous tone for the following acts.

The fire trucks led the sanctioned parade bringing the crowd’s attention back to the official event in the mayhem left in the wake of the naked duo.

Sirens wailing.

Lights flashing.

With the pace re-established, the Parade rolled on. The Non-Stop Ski Bus, clearly exceeding any “approved� maximum load inside and with perhaps another twenty or so in the non-conforming, non-approved seating/standing on the roof looked more like a transplant from the dirt mountain highways of Central America than the BC mountains. The Sparwood float passed with the low growl of a truck engine and a rousing rendition of “Working in a Coal Mine�.

The Parade ended with a seeming endless line of sleds between the Fernie Snowmobile Club and the final truck a trailer with their new sled and track setter of the Fernie Nordic Society.

In between were school kids, saddle clubs, a rocking Prestige Tours bus, Elk Valley Coal Mine “truck� and a host of other entries, each carrying an imprint of some sort or another.

On Saturday, in the bright light of the day, the Salomon XWing Rally sent competitors across Fernie Alpine Resort for the first of two days of mixed team events. GS, terrain parks, free skiing and just playing in the vertical world of FAR would determine who shipped off to Europe and the Alps to compete in a seven day XWing Rally final. A torch light parade dropped down the darkened slopes as revelers spread out for dinner, to listen to music, or just to recover from the festivities of Friday night.

On Sunday, The Dummy Downhill, the crowning event of the weekend staered in front of the FAR Rental Shop with the all-important weigh in for the Dummy Downhill. This is no casual event, not an event just for dummies. There are The Rules. No living cells allowed. No more than three feet wide. No more than six feet tall and no shorter than three feet. Only Dummies on skis or snowboards. Dummy names must be “suitable for publication�. And teams are responsible for picking up the dummy remains and any spare, extraneous dummy parts left along and/or at the end of the course.

Pretty simple. Not rocket science, although a couple of dummies approached sub-orbital height off the jump.

With the last of the Dummies launched, “landed� and scored, the crowd called it a day, a weekend and a close to the Griz for another year. A good thing, too. It’s a pace not sustainable in the long run. Where would we find all those Dummies every week?