Word of Wapiti Music Festival is spreading.
The two-day indie music festival returned to Fernie’s Annex Park last week and sold out on the Friday night for the first time in the event’s history.
About 2500 people passed through the gates each day, undeterred by a severe thunderstorm on Saturday that brought heavy rain and hail, and prompted an evacuation of the festival grounds.
GALLERY: 2018 Wapiti Music Festival
“I think it was our best year ever,” declared Wapiti Music Festival Society President Kevin McIsaac on Sunday.
“I think we ran very smoothly with of course the exception of the lightning storm, which was a bit of an interruption but I was very pleased with the numbers of people (and) the quality of the music.
“I was less pleased with the hazy smoky air but that does seem to be a factor for this time of year regularly now.”
The smoke was caused by several fires in nearby areas, including Fernie’s Coal Creek Forest Service Road.
On Saturday, Environment Canada issued a severe thunderstorm watch for the Elk Valley, warning of strong wind gusts, large hail and heavy rain.
About 5 p.m., it began to thunder, rain and hail in Fernie, with lightning strikes sparking more fires around the region.
Wapiti organizers made a call to shut down the festival in line with their policy to evacuate in the event of 1-2 lightning strikes.
The event reopened about an hour later once the danger had passed.
“Once the call was made then it was a nice orderly process to ask people to head out, which I thought went extremely well,” said McIsaac.
“I thought the attendees were very cooperative and calm, and orderly and the evacuation process went extremely well.
“I was super proud of all the people that were there and all the attendees, and I was very happy that it was short-lived.”
The interruption meant Winnipeg band Yes We Mystic’s set was cancelled, which McIsaac said was disappointing but unavoidable due to time restrictions
The festival finished on a high, with 14-piece brass band My Son the Hurricane calling other Wapiti artists on stage for a finale number that featured crowd surfing and a rendition of TLC’s “Don’t Go Chasing Waterfalls”.
“That was really a lot of fun, I think people enjoyed that quite a bit,” said McIsaac.
“Although I didn’t get a chance to try it, I understand our new wine and cider choices from Dirty Laundry and BC Tree Fruits were a big hit.
“That was a bit of change for us this year.”
Organizers were due to meet on Wednesday night to start planning for next year’s event, which has been tentatively set for August 9-10, 2019.
“We’ll see what kind of ideas come out from the team,” said McIsaac.
“It takes a group of about 20-plus organizers to plan this all year round and a lot of them have very good ideas and every year they come out with ‘we could do this a little bit better, we could do that a little bit differently’ which is why we keep improving year after year.”
To see our Wapiti gallery, visit Thefreepress.ca.