Complaints about ever-present dust, overflowing toilets, chaotic parking lots and lax security were as pervasive as talk about the music on Sunday, the third and final day of British Columbia's inaugural Pemberton Festival.
From the very start, Canada's largest outdoor summer concert in recent memory has not been without its birthing pains.
On Friday, more than 40,000 fans made the bumper-to-bumper trek up B.C.'s Sea-to-Sky Highway for the three-day rock music extravaganza. By Friday afternoon, the highway approaching the village of Pemberton was backed up, and fans were greeted with lineups, confusion and dust kicked up by crowds in the farmer's field that has been converted into the festival site.
"Getting here from Whistler was a nightmare," Adelle Papp told CBC News. "Then we paid $90 for parking, and we just stumbled on it. There was no one directing traffic, nothing."
The confusion and dust continued into Saturday and Sunday. Organizers have had their hands full directing the 20,000 people who are camping in the fields surrounding the concert site. And fans have been resorting to covering their faces with scarves so as not to inhale the dust.
Although organizers promised tight security measures that would keep alcohol, weapons and drugs out of the camping area, festival-goers said security was lax.
"Security was giving up," Chris Betts told the Canadian Press. "There were no checks and no one seemed to know who was in charge."
"It was kind of like going to a war zone," Colin Horgan said. "It feels like entering a refugee camp: tents, blowing dust and bright lights."
But although fans were grumbling, the festival has been garnering raves from the bands. Singer Emily Haines with Metric, the Toronto band that took the stage on Friday, said the festival marks a change in Canada's music scene.
"The days of Canada being sort of insular and disconnected from the rest of the world culturally are over, and festivals like this are a sign of that," she said.
Performances have run until 1 a.m. each day on four different stages against the backdrop of snow-capped Mount Currie towering 8,300 feet above the festival site.
The Pemberton Festival winds up Sunday evening with the U.K. rockers Coldplay.
With files from the Canadian Press
