Squamish Valley Music Festival 2015: 27 shots of mountains, raincoats and Drake-on-a-sticks

by Joy Pecknold August 11, 2015

As far as festival backdrop’s go, it’s doesn’t get much better than the Stawamus Chief, a grand granite dome, standing watch. At the sixth Squamish Valley Music Festival this past weekend, many performers—Brandon Flowers and Sam Smith for two—commented on the British Columbian town’s natural beauty.

The mountain woke up like this, but for the rest of us there were flower crowns, metallic temporary tattoos and elaborate braids to distract from the bleary eyes brought on by too much raving and not enough REM sleep. Many of those fishtails and cornrows were the handiwork of hairstylists brought in by Lush Cosmetics, who we tagged along with for the weekend.

On Saturday, festival goers were thrown a style wrench when the rain clouds showed up (they came for Drizzy, obviously) but many rose to the occasion with blinged-out wellies and whimsical parasols, while others held fast to bikini tops and bottoms as if the world were their waterpark. One corner of the campground made that a reality on Sunday by crafting a soapy slip-and-slide out of tarps—good clean fun to wash off Saturday night’s Drake before Sunday evening’s Mumford & Sons.