I first went to Bass Canyon in 2022, and it has since become a can't-miss event for me every year. Every August, the Gorge Amphitheater in the middle of Washington state hosts this dubstep and drum 'n bass festival. Not only is the music an experience, but so is the amazing view of the Columbia River gorge.
Thursday, August 15, 2024
For this trip I would be flying out of Albuquerque. Usually I try to save Albuquerque for long-haul direct flights, since it's so out of the way for me in Clovis, and use the more convenient Lubbock or Amarillo for trips like this with layovers. However, the only way to do this entirely on reward points involved starting and ending this trip in Albuquerque, with layovers in Salt Lake City on the way there and Los Angeles on the way back. All of these flights were on Delta, the only airline I had enough points to do this with.
The drive to the airport was thankfully uneventful, something like three and a half hours with no traffic jams or road construction delays. The first flight from ABQ to SLC didn't last too long.
In the SLC airport I got lunch from a restaurant called Vessel Kitchen. The dish I picked out was called a Nicky G Bowl, made with falafel, spinach, tomato, feta, eggplant, and crispy chickpeas. This is a place to remember if you're ever in this airport. There were also, like in every airport, some shops selling local goods and hokey souvenirs; in one I actually found some locally sourced honey which I bought to take home with me.
After a layover of about an hour and a half, my second flight took off. The plane landed in Seattle on schedule. After stepping off, I got a coffee and headed for baggage claim. And here I was irritated to find my suitcase with a big dent in it. This was so irritating because this was a brand-new Samsonite hard-shell rollaround that I had just bought less than a week ago, and already it got damaged. Did someone kick it? Later, at the hotel, after opening the thing I popped the dent back out, but there's still a deep, permanent scratch in that spot.
From the airport I walked to the same hotel I'm always staying at whenever I'm just passing through on the way to Bass Canyon, the Rodeway Inn just across I-5 from the airport. This room I was staying in smelled like cigarette smoke. Being in a Rodeway, I wasn't exactly expecting luxury, but still, it smelled awful.
It was still early evening and I had a lot of time to burn up, so for dinner I was going somewhere a bit further than the airport area. From the nearby light rail station I caught a train to Pioneer Square, in the heart of Seattle, and then walked down to the waterfront to find some seafood.
I've been to the Crab Pot before and thought it was worth returning to. Along with a garden salad with shrimp, I also got a glass of their own Crab Pot Lager and it was delicious. At that time I'd really wanted to drink a smooth, tasty lager, because for weeks the only beers I'd been able to find were really bitter red and pale ales. I also had an Irish coffee, but unlike the last time they but Bailey's in it, which isn't the "authentic" way of preparing it.
Friday, August 16, 2024
Today I would be heading into the festival. Unlike the last two years, I wouldn't be catching a ride with friends, because they had already gone there and set up their camp the day before while I was in the air. This time, I would be riding on a shuttle bus from the Seattle airport.
That Rodeway Inn may not have been the best hotel, but it was in a great location, being a short walk over a pedestrian bridge from the airport. In that airport are some great restaurants, on both sides of security. Here on the outside is a great place called Sourced, where I could really wake myself up with a medium Americano, an "everything" bagel with lox and cream cheese, and a cup of grapes.
After returning to the hotel room to take one last real shower, pack up, and check out, I was back in the airport to get a second coffee and find the place where the shuttle buses were taking off.
The bus ride from Seattle to the Gorge was about two and a half hours, with only one stop at a highway rest stop. The end of the ride was in the GA camping area. This was, however, not the place I would be camping; I needed to reach the Wildhorse, which is off-site. This wasn't so easy. The Wildhorse's shuttle buses only took off from a point near the venue entrance in the midst of VIP and RV camping. Where I was standing, GA camping, was a bit of a hike from any of that. So I had to walk down this long gravel trail along with a bunch of other people who were leaving their campsites to go into the festival, while I was the only one dragging luggage.
With all that chunky gravel, dragging my suitcase was a real hassle. While it did get covered with dust I had to clean off days later, it didn't get scratched or dented too seriously despite all the rocks. So how did it get that big gash during the flights the day before? Someone must have kicked it hard.
At the end of the long gravel trail, it still took a lot of wandering through the maze-like campgrounds to find the pickup point. When I did finally find it, the Wildhorse shuttle pulled in after a short wait, and since I didn't yet have a Wildhorse wristband I had to explain to the bus driver that I was camping with this large group that had arrived yesterday...and all I had to do was mention a certain person's name because it was someone who the Wildhorse's owners knew pretty well. This is one of those times when it pays to have connections.
Once in the campground, I immediately got my Wildhorse wristband and joined the group I had last seen a year ago. It had seriously expanded, as with each successive year, people invite their friends who in turn invite their friends. I got to know a lot of people I hadn't met before as I got my tent set up.
It was sometime after 5 in the afternoon when we finally got into the festival. Like most of the rest of this group, I had splurged on the box seats, and so had to follow the special procedure for getting in. Walk through a special entrance gate where I had to show the attendant an e-ticket on my phone, which they scanned, then get admitted without any wristband, and walk to the entrance of the box seat area, show that e-ticket again, and at last get a wristband for admission into the boxes. This wasn't a "Bass Canyon" wristband but a "The Gorge" wristband and was only good for that day, so this procedure would have to be repeated every day. Each day the wristband would be a certain color, and Friday it was sky blue.
Emorfik on the Canyon stage Friday afternoon.
Being back at this place for the first time in a year, I wasn't content to spend the whole time in the box, and so walked around to get reacquainted with the Gorge and with Bass Canyon. The drinks and food were all mostly the same as every other time I'd been there. All the bars served big 25-ounce cans of Bud Light, Coors Light, Michelob Ultra, Stella Artois, and Modelo, with one other bar, Whiskey Jack's Saloon, serving craft beers on draft. A few other bars with age-verification requirements served liquor shots and cocktails.
Food was much the same, too, with Blazing Teriyaki, Asian Express, Trejo's Tacos, Volt Burger Smash, and Art Bird Fried Chicken in the same spots they always were. Many other smaller stands sold gyro wraps, noodle bowls, smoothies, and Vietnamese coffee.
Here's a view I'll never get tired of.
Here's another view I'll never get tired of.
At the bottom of the hill, off to the left of the Canyon stage, there's a special bar, called the Cliff House, you need box seat wristbands to get in. They had an interesting cocktail they were serving there.
Not bad, although the juice was rather sugary.
Well, back to the box for some more headbanging for the rest of the evening. Phaseone and Funtcase were doing their B2B set:
Then we got to see perennial Bass Canyon favorites Space Laces and Ganja White Night before Excision did his usual Friday night headlining set. Unfortunately I couldn't stay for that whole set, since I had been awake too long and was running out of energy.
Saturday, August 17, 2024
Just another morning at the Wildhorse...this place had really become familiar by now. The Corral Café was still there serving up their tasty breakfast burritos, and their unlimited free coffees all morning. At our campsite, consisting of two RVs surrounded by a huge cluster of tents and pavilions, many of us spent a lot of time putting kandi bracelets together.
Later, in another case of "it's not what you know, it's who you know," most of us got to spend the afternoon at a pool party at the upscale-looking Sagecliffe Resort and Spa.
We spent most of the afternoon here, lounging in and by the pool while buying several drinks at their bar and listening to the DJ there.
Hours later, after the pool party, we had this huge spaghetti dinner brought to us by...I don't remember anymore. I'd been anticipating this since during the pool party when I first heard about it. Unfortunately, when the spaghetti actually got to us, I was beyond disappointed to find the sauce was full of black olives. Olives of any kind are one of the few foods left that I still can't tolerate the taste of. Someday, I'm going to have to force myself to eat one and not gag on it, but this was not that day. While I did put some on a plate and painstakingly pick out the olives, this was too much of a hassle to make a satisfying meal, so I would probably have to get more food in the festival later.
As we all boarded the shuttle bus, clouds were gathering and it looked like a storm was brewing. That storm sure did brew pretty quickly into something powerful, because almost immediately after we entered the venue, it shut down and everyone was told to evacuate.
But we weren't outside the venue for very long before they started letting everyone back in. There was still some rain falling, but only a little sprinkle and no lightning. The sun had set by then. Once back inside, we went right to our box while Kill The Noise was on the Canyon stage. But I didn't stay in the box for very long, because I wanted to be down in the pit which wasn't too crowded then. That was fun.
After Kill The Noise was over, I and someone else from our group went off to ride the Ferris wheel, something I I always want to do at these festival but usually never do. Great view of the festival lit up at night.
Not a whole lot else happened at the Gorge that night, because the storm returned. I did see some of the Dion Timmer/Kompany B2B set at the Canyon stage, and some DnB DJ on the Hilltop stage, the schedule said it was Friction but I think it was someone else. It was while I was at the Hilltop stage when the festival shut down again, for the rest of the night this time. All the music stopped, and directions appeared on all the big screens by the stages, telling everyone to proceed to the exits and head back to camp.
And that's what we did, walked back out the gates and onto a shuttle bus back to the Wildhorse. While the storm didn't damage much anything there, I heard later that the GA camping area got hit hard. At our mostly-unscathed campsite, we had a soundsystem to keep our own party going all night.
Sunday, August 18, 2024
Because of how much of the festival had gotten cancelled on Saturday, the organizers changed the Sunday schedule, so that everyone who couldn't play on Saturday would be squeezed into Sunday's lineup. That meant that Sunday's lineup was going to be stacked, though with shortened sets.
On getting into the festival that afternoon, I first went to the Vietnamese coffee stand and made the shocking discovery that they were all out! That meant, with the only coffee of the day being what I got in the morning, I would likely have difficulty staying awake at night.
I decided to stay at our box by the Canyon stage for the whole time, for all the big name dubstep sets that would be there in rapid succession.
Ray Volpe
Excision's detox set (OK so I didn't stay at the box the whole time)
Eptic
As the sun set I got to see Kai Wachi and Wooli, whose sets were each slightly less than an hour.
The lack of evening caffeine, combined with all the beer and shots I was getting from the boxes' bar, eventually took its toll. While LSZee (LSDream and CloZee) were great, I fell asleep sometime during their set and woke up in the middle of Zeds Dead.
The last set of Sunday night, as always, was Excision. Unlike the last two years, this was not a B2B set. It was billed as the "Throwback Set." This set had so many older, "classic" tracks from many tours and festivals throughout his career...so I heard. I haven't been following this scene for very long so much of the old stuff was still new to me.
Monday, August 19, 2024
Another Bass Canyon was over, and it was now time for everyone to pack up and head home. After I was packed up, someone from our huge camping group graciously gave me a ride back to the entrance to GA camping where I could catch the shuttle back to Seattle.
Those three nights of headbanging were just as good a time as the last two years. This time, though, I didn't spend nearly as much time with the DnB producers on the Hilltop stage, which I think was mostly due to the disruption caused by the storm. I'll certainly keep coming back, for another year, and another, and another...though I may not keep shelling out the extra money for box seats every time.
Videos of sets from the festival: