Forbidden Plateau Legend Investigation
This is weird. It's not fiction, and it's kind of fact, but sometimes not exactly. I'm not sure how to classify this.
I did some research and a field trip "investigating" a local legend in a nearby town on Monday afternoon. Possibly as a basis for eventual fic of some description, but in all likelihood not for a long time, so if it gives you plot-bunnies, feel free to act upon them, leave a link in the comments if you do, please! :-)
It's also freakishly long and has a lot of graphics.
Disclaimer: WARNING! Anyone stumbling across this looking for a reliable authority on the Forbidden Plateau area or legends thereof, you will not find it here. This is an investigation strictly undertaken for my own amusement based on investigations undertaken by characters on a TV show called Supernatural, and is therefore a rambling account of no real research value since the closest thing to a focus this has is how to turn it all into creepy fiction. All rights of quoted and depicted research materials remain with their myriad owners, and no disrespect is intended to anyone. Caveat Lector!
The Forbidden Plateau Investigation
General 'Way the Legend Goes' as I know it:
The local Native peoples were raided each year and women and children were taken away as slaves. To foil the raiders, the women and children were sent up to the plateau. One year, when raiding season was over, the tribe went up to retrieve the women and children and they were gone. They didn't find a single trace of them. They searched until the snow fell, and when it fell the snow was blood-red. The tribe declared the place infested with evil spirits and called the place Forbidden Plateau, refusing to go back. (Other versions have two warring tribes going up, one tribe "falling off" the mountain, and the other tribe declaring the area taboo, again with reference to blood-red snow)
Some attribute the 'snow turning red' as a series of particularly red sunsets reflecting off the glacier, except... the snow actually does turn red! The snow on the back side of Mt. Beecher has been observed to have blood-red to reddish-pinkish hued patches. This is attributed to some kind of chemical interaction with 'old man's beard" moss and the cold of the snow, or some kind of microscopic flora or some other perfectly rational explanation having noting to do with evil spirits and unquiet ghosts. Darn science, taking the creepy out of things.
So anyway, it's a legend I grew up with, it's about time I looked into it. So I did, and here's my rambling photo-laden account of everything. And I do mean everything... (Click images for larger versions)
The beginning of the trip
I started out in the afternoon. Daft, yes, but by the time I was in a position to go, that's what time it was, and it was a case of "Now or never". The Forbidden Plateau area is huge and includes a lot of lakes, small mountains, hills, sub-alpine bogs, you name it. No way I can cover the entire area in an afternoon, so I'm focussing on the old "Forbidden Plateau Ski Lodge" which I remember having many occurrences of bad luck.
Gassed up, spent waaay too much on junk food and batteries at the gas station, but I figure, heck, if you're gonna be crazy, go crazy. Gorgeous day, no rain. Wore plaid, denim, and three layers and kind of kicked myself for not wearing the shirt I used as 'Blackie' in the shirt hug pictures. But oh well, I wanted extra pockets.
AC/DC, Bad Company, and Led Zeppelin on a tape, my cell phone, camera, a jackknife, "Sample baggies' (god only knows why it just seemed like the right thing to take at the time, I certainly didn't use any) and haphazard notes on Forbidden Plateau pulled off the net. Debated a trip to the local museum, but I was pretty sure it's gone mostly art gallery anyway, and I was burning daylight.
Okay fine, after ten minutes of the Sam bits of my brain debating the Dean bits of my brain, ending when the Sam bits use "puppy dog eyes" on the Dean bits, I'm going to the museum first. Phone call: "Hi, Museum? Do you have anything on the Forbidden Plateau legend? You have a book I can look at about the area? Do you have a copier?" There was a bit of a pause before the yes to the copier question, I thought it was because I was being weird, but I would see differently.
Museum
Used to be a post office. There's still a post box there for people who still haven't clued in that it's a museum now. See, Canada Post truck!
So I walk into the museum in my plaid shirt (hoping like hell none of the staff watches Supernatural because they'll laugh me out of the building) and ask what they have on the legends of Forbidden Plateau. Guy at desk says "Legends hunh, well we have this book, and of course I know all about the legend." If I was a brassier woman I would have quizzed the museum guy about local folklore, but I would not have been able to keep a straight face, so I chickened out and picked the book.
Holy crap, this is the coolest book! It's huge. About 2 feet long, 1 foot wide, and 6 inches thick, all about the history of the Forbidden Plateau area. I realize why person on the phone sounded a bit strange about the photocopier question. The book probably weighs ten pounds and was not intended to leave its special desk. It's got geographic info, natural history, common flora and fauna, accounts from climbers and skiers and every major news article relating to the area published between 1916 and 1986. The leather cover is hand made by the local historian (Ruth Masters, no relation to Meg, hee) that compiled it, I think. I asked the guy if I could photograph it, he said go ahead. *click*
Guy flips to section on the origin of the name at the start of the book, and leaves me to examine the book, but asks just as he leaves the room why I'm looking for the info. "It's for a story." I say. "Nuh-uh, us first!" say my eighteen to twenty-four warring plot-bunnies already in varying stages of progress. I smile in a sane manner and the guy leaves, nodding sagely.
I start writing notes, but my handwriting is awful, and I quickly realize there's way too much nifty stuff that could feed into a plot to write everything down, because I write really slow. So I think to myself, "What would Sam do?" I look over at my camera and grin.
It's a slow day at the museum, and the guy did say it was okay to take pictures... So I set my relatively idiot proof camera on "take pictures of teeny stuff close up" setting and turned off the flash (darn shiny plasticized pages) and snapped away. Stealthily. So of course half of them are useless because the camera keeps turning off between shots and I'm trying to be fast and stealthy and keep forgetting to turn the "take pictures of teeny stuff" function back on. Arg.
Researching
(AKA Massive psycho nitpicky exposition, and background and dredging through 80-odd years of history. Skip to the next bold-headed section if you want, I won't be hurt.)
The first thing in the book regarding the origin of the name (and the page the museum guy opened the book to) says the legend is all crap, and there's no actual proof of anything, and disclaims that the book only references the myths and legends only for the sake of thoroughness. Since Sam and Dean run into this, oh, like, every episode ever, I press on with a grin.
The first news article published in 1922 regarding the legends indicates a young man kidnapped or helped by some kind of giant hairy sasquatch (AKA bigfoot) people. No mention of the legend versions I know about, but later on in the book, the author of the article told a local writing group he'd made this one up, along with a lot of other 'tales' that he'd published. He was kind of known for being the area's answer to the Weekly World News. All on his own. That takes talent.
Of course, his confession doesn't prevent people from reporting sasquatch sightings for decades. This one from 1957.
Since it might be something that would ping for Sam doing a look-see, I started noting accidents and deaths. This was the discovery in 1926 of the remains of a miner named Cook that had been missing since 1913. His skeleton was found under several inches of moss growth, next to his unfired, loaded rifle and revolver. The person who found him was a man named Henry Rees who was actually lost at the time, who had been part of the original search party to find him in 1913. Remember the name of the guy who found Cook, because it gets weird later on.
Here we have reference to the 'red snow' phenomenon in an article from 1931. Vegetable growth they say, nothing weird at all about that blood-red snow, perfectly natural vegetative phenomenon... unless you're writing fiction of course. Hehe. "Scene of some wilderness carnage" indeed.
This is another one that pops out as something that might ring an alarm. This guy, while hospitalized, managed to commit suicide by slicing his arm open with a penknife. He built a lot of cabins up in the Forbidden Plateau area and was a trapper and general woodsman, and was considered to be an expert on the Forbidden Plateau area. After his death, the cabins he built fell into disrepair and disappeared. Might point toward some kind of snarly nature spirit out to drive the people trying to civilize the place bonkers.
However, as Ms. Masters summarizes so neatly in 1986, Mr. Anderson was also well known as the guy who turned in a mine union leader hiding out from the authorities in one of his cabins in 1918. This betrayal subsequently lead to the mine union leader's death. The miners may have held a very long grudge. There was no inquest into Mr. Anderson's death... Hm. Moving on.
This article in Sept. 1930 expounds on a theory that there was an earthquake in the mountains and sinkholes and fissures opened up swallowing some of their tribe, and this might be why the Native population considers the area taboo.
That's not so far-fetched. In 1946 the strongest on-land earthquake recorded in Canada (up to 1999, anyways, having trouble finding newer records) occurred . It was 7.3 on the Richter scale (not that huge compared to many others around the world) and its epicenter was Forbidden Plateau, and parts of one of the mountains in the area fell off. Every kid that went to school knows about that quake because it partially collapsed the elementary school at the time. No one was in it because it was a Sunday.
Again, moving on.
In February 1931, a group of people hiking Mt. Beecher (the one with the most occurrences of red/pink snow) suffered casualties. Of course, that's one of the pictures that's too blurry to read. However, the one from July of the same year that reports occurrences of "pink snow" at Sunrise Lake, lower on the mountain than they've ever been before, that photo turned out just fine.
It's amazing what coincidences you see when you're looking for plot elements, hunh?
Harry Reese
Remember up top where I'd mentioned to remember a name (Henry Rees) in conjunction with the disappearance and discovery of a miner? Well, it's not exactly the same name, but close enough that one could be a mistake for the other. This could have been the same guy. I was sure I'd taken photos of a couple articles about Harry Reese's disappearance, but I guess I missed them.
Harry Reese went missing in the mountains in December 1933, and was found in June 1934. No injuries, sitting next to his unfired shotgun, cause of death heart failure. (In the world of creepy fiction, that could equate to 'scared to death'.) No remains of clothing were found either... so this guy was naked on a mountain in December? Hypothermia-induced heart failure, I'd guess. Still, all kinds of creepy about this one. Definitely goes into the 'Hmm...' pile.
Not related, but kind of neat. In the 30's there was a cabin on Mt. Beecher hikers and fishermen could stay in that operated under the honour system. Leave it cleaner than you found it, leave the woodbox full and leave a note in the visitor's book to say you were there. Looked through for any entries that said "Being chased by evil spirits" but didn't find any. My favourite line out of this is "Jul 28, 1932: Raining like hell today, we got drowned to the ass."
Since I'm digressing anyways, there was also a prospector, Jimmy Aston, a friend of the Mr. Anderson, of the suspicious penknife death, who prospected by dowsing. He put bits of different mining-worthy metals in the fingers of each glove and used a divining wand to find those metals. I just thought that was interesting. Next!
J. S. Mitchell
Another one I was sure I got a photo for, but apparently didn't. James Scott Mitchell was a member of a survey party in September of 1937 who died, and no one on the party is sure exactly how the accident happened.
They were surveying the area near a creek in the Plateau area. His party last saw him alive taking off his pack beside a stream he was planning to cross, having a bit of a break while he figured out the best way to get across the creek.
His survey team found him washed up on a sandbar a quarter mile downstream with a skull fracture, and no sign of drowning, so he was not breathing when he hit the water. I wish I'd gotten the photos now, because I don't recall whether it said he had his pack with him or not. I think he probably didn't because there's no way he would have washed that far if he had a heavy surveyors pack dragging his body down... He was an expert hiker and very familiar with the territory and getting across the stream shouldn't have been a major problem for him. As a basis for fiction, maybe an annoyed sasquatch bashed him on the head. Really, though, he probably slipped and fell, which occasionally happens to even the most experty experts.
This is an artists' (her last name is Jensen! I had to include it!) drawing of where the lift installed in 1966 would be going. The Forbidden Plateau Lodge depicted on this looks way further down than the one I'm going to. It's right at the bottom of the DNA strand looking ski-paths coming down from the top of the Rope Toe, above where the Skyline Village is going to be. It's known as the Day Lodge sometimes, so the one down below would have been the Main Lodge built in 1934 and might have been bigger and more hotel-ish.
Here's a summary of the legend pretty much as I know it, published in 1968. I love the sidebar by the historian, particularly the all-caps on "BUNK". She'd be such fun in a scene with Sam and Dean I think. Hehe.
There are legitimate accounts of the Native peoples refusing to return to the Forbidden Plateau area in the early days of settlement, so maybe the 'bunk' value isn't 100 percent.
This happened in '82, to the main Lodge that was built in 1934. There were a couple prior incidents of structure fires, one burning down the Mt. Beecher cabin, one burning down a look-out in '42. The only note on who set the fire was that it was a 27-year old man who was being psychiatrically evaluated, and nothing further was recorded by the historian. The Lodge burnt to the ground, and I don't think it was re-built, they just shifted operations to the Day Lodge. The area where it was is now a cluster of rustic houses. Anyway, possibly nuts guy burning down a ski lodge? Might influenced by evil spirits, might just be drunk.
The main lodge was built in 1934. Lodge changed hands a couple times, in '46 (the year of the earthquake, so possibly the lodge was damaged), then in '49, then again in '61. Two years after the '82 fire, the hill was up, running, and turning a profit for the first time in a long while. It started struggling again not too long after though, and the last two years of operation it had no ski season at all, due to poor snowfall and damage done to the ski lodge during a minor quake, or another fire, if I recall correctly. Then there was a freakish massive sudden snow dump in '99 and the Day Lodge collapsed, and then vandals torched it repeatedly. After that, they kind of decided it wasn't worth the effort, I guess.
Okay, enough research! It's about an hour later and daylight is conflagrating frantically. As I was leaving the Museum (giving a reasonable donation) one of the other staff behind the desk, doing her tourism duty, started going on about other parts of the Museum and upcoming events. I smiled and nodded my way to the door thinking "Can't you see I'm on a mission, lady?" when she pops out chirpily with, "You'll have to come back in December to see our gingerbread display!" Whereupon I had an overwhelming flash of Dean responding with a lascivious comment about 'coming back later to see her cookies'. I muttered a strangled "Uh, okay!" and fled out the door, giggling. This show has seriously warped my silly little brain.
Getting up the hill
The trip up the hill was a blast. Have you seen European Rally Races? Like that, only without the mud and washouts and with a better soundtrack. Going 80kph on backroads, blaring AC/DC. Dodging massive logging trucks when I had to cut through an active logging zone... When something is ten times the size of your vehicle, fully loaded, going full tilt, and you are technically a trespasser, it has right of way, and the truck driver knows it. Mass and momentum wins.
Then the dirt section. I am so glad it wasn't raining for the trip up. The road on the map looks like a psychotic lightning bolt. 180 degree switchbacks without any kind of retaining walls, washboard, loose gravel, fist-sized rocks, unmarked soft gravel shoulders... All through the dirt section I was thinking of what Dean would be saying if he had to take Metallicar up that road. Heh. Nothing printable I'm sure... I had fun though. My little white car isn't exactly white anymore, but I don't think there's any damage to the paint. Not that I'd notice, the big scrape down the side from the previous owner's attempt at driving by Braille is still there four years later.
Here's me taking photos on a hairpin turn while driving and trying not to pull an Angela. Wow, it sure looks like I was going faster than I actually was in that second picture. I was also leaving notes for myself in my cell voicemail while driving, which I figured was marginally safer than trying to write notes. This is why two people are better than one on these kinds of things. One to take pictures, look at the map, make cell phone calls to themselves, theorize and make notes, and one to keep the car from launching off a cliff.
Anyway, finally get to the sign and see that yes, at some point in time during operation, they did officially change the name to "Wood Mountain Ski Park", to try and get away from the whole 'evil spirits of mysterious mass death' thing. Heh. Or it might have been named that all along, and the locals just kept calling it Forbidden Plateau anyway. Ask anyone in the town how to get to "Wood Mountain Ski Park" and they'll stare at you like you have a fish on your head.
The Forbidden Plateau Lodge had been on the brink of extinction for years, and then there was a fire, and a small earthquake, and the big snow dump that collapsed the lodge and the wreckage being torched repeatedly... It's worse than the castle in the swamp in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. They stopped bothering to try and fix it, I guess. The climate has changed so much that years will go by without enough snow to open a ski lodge in that location anymore.
Taking that picture of the sign was also where I discovered the unmarked and undistinguished loose gravel shoulders. Nothing like getting your car mired on the side of a mountain to make you realize how obsessed you are. Some creative automotive finagling later (involving sliding backwards blindly towards the edge of a cliff, but oh well), I'm back on the road, fishtailing like crazy.
Forbidden Plateau Ski Lodge site
So here we are. It was so quiet. Like nothing. No birds, no bugs, not a single noise. Creepy. Mainly because I was looking for creepy, but there you go.
Okay, so I geeked out a bit when I saw there was actually still the ruined ski lodge and all the lifts and outbuildings and stuff. I had heard they were building condos, so I was expecting maybe cleared lots and construction equipment. There were condos going in down lower, before the end of the paved road (wimps!) So anyway, ruins! The picture above on the left is the foundation of the Day Lodge. It used to be a huge building with a fieldstone fireplace, a restaurant and a bar and such like. Sad really. I think they kept the parking lot plow in that little cave-like nook, but I'm not sure.
Here's the plough nook, as close as I dared get, because of the way my paranoid brain works and the way sound echoes around in semi-enclosed cement areas, it sounded like something was moving around inside. It was about that point that I narrowly avoided stepping in bear droppings. No, there aren't any pictures of that. Ick. I'm pretty sure it was from a bear, unless someone's making a habit of walking an oversized bull mastiff or three out among the ruins.
I clambered up a dirt berm to the top area of ruins, and I wish these photos had turned out better. That's the problem shooting into the sun. I think it was an upper lodge, or just some kind of building at the top end of the ski lift (you can see the chairs hanging on the line still) White, multi story and you could see right through it. Eerie silence combined with abandoned looming structure with me looking for weirdness equals me snapping more crappy pictures. It looked so ominous with the darker clouds coming up behind it, foreboding. I don't know if that comes through in the photos.
You can see the cement walls outlining the lodge areas. It's all full of rubble. Signs of fires and beer drinking, but surprisingly few bits of graffiti. Hm. But there is some red lichen kind of formation, or maybe it's rust. Or maybe its blooooood! Um, no. Heh.
Rubble piles. I only took this picture because it was visually interesting, like one of those puzzles where all the pieces are the same shape you give to people when you want them to go insane.
This is me being so uncharacteristically brave it still freaks me out. See, there's this one section that's surrounded by foundation, so you can't really see into it unless you are on top of a foundation wall. If you can climb a ten foot tall cement wall, great. If not, you have to get on to the cement wall at a place where it's closer to the ground, then walk along the 8 inch wide, crumbly in spots, bits of rebar and metal sticking up in others, foundation wall for a good 10 or 20 yards, until you get to the correct location to see in. I did this, calmly and collectedly, got to the edge of the pit-thing and took a picture of the sharp, jagged, rusty, metal and cement tetanus-inducing contents. Then realized I was standing ten feet in the air.
Now, you have to know something about me to get the significance of this. I do not like heights. I have poor depth perception and balance and half of my light bulbs need replacing but I'm too chicken to get up on an 18 inch square kitchen chair two feet off the soft carpet, while holding on to the wall, doorframe, ceiling, whatever, to put in a new lightbulb. And here I am, on the side of a mountain, no one around for miles, holding on to nothing but a camera, standing on an eight inch wide thing ten feet above the ground, taking pictures of a pit of sharp hurty things I could easily fall into.
After a momentary freeze, I say "Cool!" and blithely take a picture of my car from where I'm standing.
This is what this TV series does to me, and I love it for it!
*ahem*
So anyways, on with the poking around the Plateau.
Most of the ski hill area is taken over by trees and shrubbery now. They're either blurry because evil spirits were sabotaging my camera, or because I have no photography skills. You decide. So, blurry trees on left, blurry little creature nest looking hollow log thing on right. Nature taking over now that man has failed. Bwahahah. Well, until they start building condos anyway. Would add to a P. O.'d nature spirit theory, anyways.
Clouds started descending and brushing the tops of the trees. I thought it looked cool, and maybe ominous so *click*
This used to be the... I guess you'd call it an engine house maybe? For the t-bar for the bunny hill. Wandering around the bunny hill, I heard noises. It had been so quiet all along it actually did freak me out a tiny bit, what with the signs of bear earlier, but it sounded like a river. Off to investigate I go.
So, right on the edge of the old bunny/kiddie slope, right next to where the T-bar used to run there's a great huge ravine with a river somewhere way down there. Way, way, way, down there. Maybe 70 feet down.
I was on this hill a couple times while it was in operation (I wasn't skiing, because I'm completely incompetent. I tried once and they literally made me stop before I hurt people). I remember the big orange net that kept people from sliding off the end into the parking lot, but I don't remember anything remotely like a safety net or snow berm, or wall or anything in that area to keep people from skiing off the edge into the ravine. Hm, and this was the slope for the absolute beginners.
So of course since I'm up there theoretically trying to do a quasi-Winchestery investigation, I come up with a scenario where the lodge owners were appeasing the evil spirits by sacrificing a skier every so often as they skied off the edge into the ravine. The lodge owners couldn't take it anymore, stop allowing it, the snow disappears and the lodge gets destroyed. Of course not really. Just for the sake of hypothetical plot and story. Moving on.
Ooo, more blurry plant life. I took this one because there were hundreds of these little red plants next to the ravine and they looked kind of like spatters of blood. Yeah, morbid, but I'm up there poking around looking for evil spirits, so spatters of blood. They were heavily concentrated around the drop-off into the ravine too. Heh.
More blurry plants, trying to see into the bottom of the ravine. I'm finding it quite fascinating that all the plant life turned out blurry... But not really, because I do suck at taking pictures, and the camera was on 'happy face' mode. Sigh.
Broken down base of a ski lift with a circle of stones in front of it. Yeah, it's a bonfire circle but I'm looking for creepy and ominous here. Speaking of which...
...well, okay, maybe it's not that creepy. This is the remains of the first aid shack. I found it ominous as hell because the light was seriously failing and as soon as I got to around front of it, a cold breeze began kicking up and a sound started slowly building in the silence, which sounded a bit like quiet, deep, chanting. Or growling.
So, yeah. I took the picture and started heading for the car. You know, light failing, bad road, memory card full, battery failing too, ooo, look at the time, gotta go water the cat... and then I realized the noise was just someone on an ATV miles away, echoing in the mountains and had a good giggle at myself and took off for home.
And I totally didn't leave an offering of a piece of beef jerky to appease any disturbed spirits. That fell out of my hand completely by accident. Really.
- - -
This is what I did Monday afternoon. Hope it entertains!
I did some research and a field trip "investigating" a local legend in a nearby town on Monday afternoon. Possibly as a basis for eventual fic of some description, but in all likelihood not for a long time, so if it gives you plot-bunnies, feel free to act upon them, leave a link in the comments if you do, please! :-)
It's also freakishly long and has a lot of graphics.
Disclaimer: WARNING! Anyone stumbling across this looking for a reliable authority on the Forbidden Plateau area or legends thereof, you will not find it here. This is an investigation strictly undertaken for my own amusement based on investigations undertaken by characters on a TV show called Supernatural, and is therefore a rambling account of no real research value since the closest thing to a focus this has is how to turn it all into creepy fiction. All rights of quoted and depicted research materials remain with their myriad owners, and no disrespect is intended to anyone. Caveat Lector!
The Forbidden Plateau Investigation
General 'Way the Legend Goes' as I know it:
The local Native peoples were raided each year and women and children were taken away as slaves. To foil the raiders, the women and children were sent up to the plateau. One year, when raiding season was over, the tribe went up to retrieve the women and children and they were gone. They didn't find a single trace of them. They searched until the snow fell, and when it fell the snow was blood-red. The tribe declared the place infested with evil spirits and called the place Forbidden Plateau, refusing to go back. (Other versions have two warring tribes going up, one tribe "falling off" the mountain, and the other tribe declaring the area taboo, again with reference to blood-red snow)
Some attribute the 'snow turning red' as a series of particularly red sunsets reflecting off the glacier, except... the snow actually does turn red! The snow on the back side of Mt. Beecher has been observed to have blood-red to reddish-pinkish hued patches. This is attributed to some kind of chemical interaction with 'old man's beard" moss and the cold of the snow, or some kind of microscopic flora or some other perfectly rational explanation having noting to do with evil spirits and unquiet ghosts. Darn science, taking the creepy out of things.
So anyway, it's a legend I grew up with, it's about time I looked into it. So I did, and here's my rambling photo-laden account of everything. And I do mean everything... (Click images for larger versions)
The beginning of the trip
I started out in the afternoon. Daft, yes, but by the time I was in a position to go, that's what time it was, and it was a case of "Now or never". The Forbidden Plateau area is huge and includes a lot of lakes, small mountains, hills, sub-alpine bogs, you name it. No way I can cover the entire area in an afternoon, so I'm focussing on the old "Forbidden Plateau Ski Lodge" which I remember having many occurrences of bad luck.
Gassed up, spent waaay too much on junk food and batteries at the gas station, but I figure, heck, if you're gonna be crazy, go crazy. Gorgeous day, no rain. Wore plaid, denim, and three layers and kind of kicked myself for not wearing the shirt I used as 'Blackie' in the shirt hug pictures. But oh well, I wanted extra pockets.
AC/DC, Bad Company, and Led Zeppelin on a tape, my cell phone, camera, a jackknife, "Sample baggies' (god only knows why it just seemed like the right thing to take at the time, I certainly didn't use any) and haphazard notes on Forbidden Plateau pulled off the net. Debated a trip to the local museum, but I was pretty sure it's gone mostly art gallery anyway, and I was burning daylight.
Okay fine, after ten minutes of the Sam bits of my brain debating the Dean bits of my brain, ending when the Sam bits use "puppy dog eyes" on the Dean bits, I'm going to the museum first. Phone call: "Hi, Museum? Do you have anything on the Forbidden Plateau legend? You have a book I can look at about the area? Do you have a copier?" There was a bit of a pause before the yes to the copier question, I thought it was because I was being weird, but I would see differently.
Museum
Used to be a post office. There's still a post box there for people who still haven't clued in that it's a museum now. See, Canada Post truck!
So I walk into the museum in my plaid shirt (hoping like hell none of the staff watches Supernatural because they'll laugh me out of the building) and ask what they have on the legends of Forbidden Plateau. Guy at desk says "Legends hunh, well we have this book, and of course I know all about the legend." If I was a brassier woman I would have quizzed the museum guy about local folklore, but I would not have been able to keep a straight face, so I chickened out and picked the book.
Holy crap, this is the coolest book! It's huge. About 2 feet long, 1 foot wide, and 6 inches thick, all about the history of the Forbidden Plateau area. I realize why person on the phone sounded a bit strange about the photocopier question. The book probably weighs ten pounds and was not intended to leave its special desk. It's got geographic info, natural history, common flora and fauna, accounts from climbers and skiers and every major news article relating to the area published between 1916 and 1986. The leather cover is hand made by the local historian (Ruth Masters, no relation to Meg, hee) that compiled it, I think. I asked the guy if I could photograph it, he said go ahead. *click*
Guy flips to section on the origin of the name at the start of the book, and leaves me to examine the book, but asks just as he leaves the room why I'm looking for the info. "It's for a story." I say. "Nuh-uh, us first!" say my eighteen to twenty-four warring plot-bunnies already in varying stages of progress. I smile in a sane manner and the guy leaves, nodding sagely.
I start writing notes, but my handwriting is awful, and I quickly realize there's way too much nifty stuff that could feed into a plot to write everything down, because I write really slow. So I think to myself, "What would Sam do?" I look over at my camera and grin.
It's a slow day at the museum, and the guy did say it was okay to take pictures... So I set my relatively idiot proof camera on "take pictures of teeny stuff close up" setting and turned off the flash (darn shiny plasticized pages) and snapped away. Stealthily. So of course half of them are useless because the camera keeps turning off between shots and I'm trying to be fast and stealthy and keep forgetting to turn the "take pictures of teeny stuff" function back on. Arg.
Researching
(AKA Massive psycho nitpicky exposition, and background and dredging through 80-odd years of history. Skip to the next bold-headed section if you want, I won't be hurt.)
The first thing in the book regarding the origin of the name (and the page the museum guy opened the book to) says the legend is all crap, and there's no actual proof of anything, and disclaims that the book only references the myths and legends only for the sake of thoroughness. Since Sam and Dean run into this, oh, like, every episode ever, I press on with a grin.
The first news article published in 1922 regarding the legends indicates a young man kidnapped or helped by some kind of giant hairy sasquatch (AKA bigfoot) people. No mention of the legend versions I know about, but later on in the book, the author of the article told a local writing group he'd made this one up, along with a lot of other 'tales' that he'd published. He was kind of known for being the area's answer to the Weekly World News. All on his own. That takes talent.
Of course, his confession doesn't prevent people from reporting sasquatch sightings for decades. This one from 1957.
Since it might be something that would ping for Sam doing a look-see, I started noting accidents and deaths. This was the discovery in 1926 of the remains of a miner named Cook that had been missing since 1913. His skeleton was found under several inches of moss growth, next to his unfired, loaded rifle and revolver. The person who found him was a man named Henry Rees who was actually lost at the time, who had been part of the original search party to find him in 1913. Remember the name of the guy who found Cook, because it gets weird later on.
Here we have reference to the 'red snow' phenomenon in an article from 1931. Vegetable growth they say, nothing weird at all about that blood-red snow, perfectly natural vegetative phenomenon... unless you're writing fiction of course. Hehe. "Scene of some wilderness carnage" indeed.
This is another one that pops out as something that might ring an alarm. This guy, while hospitalized, managed to commit suicide by slicing his arm open with a penknife. He built a lot of cabins up in the Forbidden Plateau area and was a trapper and general woodsman, and was considered to be an expert on the Forbidden Plateau area. After his death, the cabins he built fell into disrepair and disappeared. Might point toward some kind of snarly nature spirit out to drive the people trying to civilize the place bonkers.
However, as Ms. Masters summarizes so neatly in 1986, Mr. Anderson was also well known as the guy who turned in a mine union leader hiding out from the authorities in one of his cabins in 1918. This betrayal subsequently lead to the mine union leader's death. The miners may have held a very long grudge. There was no inquest into Mr. Anderson's death... Hm. Moving on.
This article in Sept. 1930 expounds on a theory that there was an earthquake in the mountains and sinkholes and fissures opened up swallowing some of their tribe, and this might be why the Native population considers the area taboo.
That's not so far-fetched. In 1946 the strongest on-land earthquake recorded in Canada (up to 1999, anyways, having trouble finding newer records) occurred . It was 7.3 on the Richter scale (not that huge compared to many others around the world) and its epicenter was Forbidden Plateau, and parts of one of the mountains in the area fell off. Every kid that went to school knows about that quake because it partially collapsed the elementary school at the time. No one was in it because it was a Sunday.
Again, moving on.
In February 1931, a group of people hiking Mt. Beecher (the one with the most occurrences of red/pink snow) suffered casualties. Of course, that's one of the pictures that's too blurry to read. However, the one from July of the same year that reports occurrences of "pink snow" at Sunrise Lake, lower on the mountain than they've ever been before, that photo turned out just fine.
It's amazing what coincidences you see when you're looking for plot elements, hunh?
Harry Reese
Remember up top where I'd mentioned to remember a name (Henry Rees) in conjunction with the disappearance and discovery of a miner? Well, it's not exactly the same name, but close enough that one could be a mistake for the other. This could have been the same guy. I was sure I'd taken photos of a couple articles about Harry Reese's disappearance, but I guess I missed them.
Harry Reese went missing in the mountains in December 1933, and was found in June 1934. No injuries, sitting next to his unfired shotgun, cause of death heart failure. (In the world of creepy fiction, that could equate to 'scared to death'.) No remains of clothing were found either... so this guy was naked on a mountain in December? Hypothermia-induced heart failure, I'd guess. Still, all kinds of creepy about this one. Definitely goes into the 'Hmm...' pile.
Not related, but kind of neat. In the 30's there was a cabin on Mt. Beecher hikers and fishermen could stay in that operated under the honour system. Leave it cleaner than you found it, leave the woodbox full and leave a note in the visitor's book to say you were there. Looked through for any entries that said "Being chased by evil spirits" but didn't find any. My favourite line out of this is "Jul 28, 1932: Raining like hell today, we got drowned to the ass."
Since I'm digressing anyways, there was also a prospector, Jimmy Aston, a friend of the Mr. Anderson, of the suspicious penknife death, who prospected by dowsing. He put bits of different mining-worthy metals in the fingers of each glove and used a divining wand to find those metals. I just thought that was interesting. Next!
J. S. Mitchell
Another one I was sure I got a photo for, but apparently didn't. James Scott Mitchell was a member of a survey party in September of 1937 who died, and no one on the party is sure exactly how the accident happened.
They were surveying the area near a creek in the Plateau area. His party last saw him alive taking off his pack beside a stream he was planning to cross, having a bit of a break while he figured out the best way to get across the creek.
His survey team found him washed up on a sandbar a quarter mile downstream with a skull fracture, and no sign of drowning, so he was not breathing when he hit the water. I wish I'd gotten the photos now, because I don't recall whether it said he had his pack with him or not. I think he probably didn't because there's no way he would have washed that far if he had a heavy surveyors pack dragging his body down... He was an expert hiker and very familiar with the territory and getting across the stream shouldn't have been a major problem for him. As a basis for fiction, maybe an annoyed sasquatch bashed him on the head. Really, though, he probably slipped and fell, which occasionally happens to even the most experty experts.
This is an artists' (her last name is Jensen! I had to include it!) drawing of where the lift installed in 1966 would be going. The Forbidden Plateau Lodge depicted on this looks way further down than the one I'm going to. It's right at the bottom of the DNA strand looking ski-paths coming down from the top of the Rope Toe, above where the Skyline Village is going to be. It's known as the Day Lodge sometimes, so the one down below would have been the Main Lodge built in 1934 and might have been bigger and more hotel-ish.
Here's a summary of the legend pretty much as I know it, published in 1968. I love the sidebar by the historian, particularly the all-caps on "BUNK". She'd be such fun in a scene with Sam and Dean I think. Hehe.
There are legitimate accounts of the Native peoples refusing to return to the Forbidden Plateau area in the early days of settlement, so maybe the 'bunk' value isn't 100 percent.
This happened in '82, to the main Lodge that was built in 1934. There were a couple prior incidents of structure fires, one burning down the Mt. Beecher cabin, one burning down a look-out in '42. The only note on who set the fire was that it was a 27-year old man who was being psychiatrically evaluated, and nothing further was recorded by the historian. The Lodge burnt to the ground, and I don't think it was re-built, they just shifted operations to the Day Lodge. The area where it was is now a cluster of rustic houses. Anyway, possibly nuts guy burning down a ski lodge? Might influenced by evil spirits, might just be drunk.
The main lodge was built in 1934. Lodge changed hands a couple times, in '46 (the year of the earthquake, so possibly the lodge was damaged), then in '49, then again in '61. Two years after the '82 fire, the hill was up, running, and turning a profit for the first time in a long while. It started struggling again not too long after though, and the last two years of operation it had no ski season at all, due to poor snowfall and damage done to the ski lodge during a minor quake, or another fire, if I recall correctly. Then there was a freakish massive sudden snow dump in '99 and the Day Lodge collapsed, and then vandals torched it repeatedly. After that, they kind of decided it wasn't worth the effort, I guess.
Okay, enough research! It's about an hour later and daylight is conflagrating frantically. As I was leaving the Museum (giving a reasonable donation) one of the other staff behind the desk, doing her tourism duty, started going on about other parts of the Museum and upcoming events. I smiled and nodded my way to the door thinking "Can't you see I'm on a mission, lady?" when she pops out chirpily with, "You'll have to come back in December to see our gingerbread display!" Whereupon I had an overwhelming flash of Dean responding with a lascivious comment about 'coming back later to see her cookies'. I muttered a strangled "Uh, okay!" and fled out the door, giggling. This show has seriously warped my silly little brain.
Getting up the hill
The trip up the hill was a blast. Have you seen European Rally Races? Like that, only without the mud and washouts and with a better soundtrack. Going 80kph on backroads, blaring AC/DC. Dodging massive logging trucks when I had to cut through an active logging zone... When something is ten times the size of your vehicle, fully loaded, going full tilt, and you are technically a trespasser, it has right of way, and the truck driver knows it. Mass and momentum wins.
Then the dirt section. I am so glad it wasn't raining for the trip up. The road on the map looks like a psychotic lightning bolt. 180 degree switchbacks without any kind of retaining walls, washboard, loose gravel, fist-sized rocks, unmarked soft gravel shoulders... All through the dirt section I was thinking of what Dean would be saying if he had to take Metallicar up that road. Heh. Nothing printable I'm sure... I had fun though. My little white car isn't exactly white anymore, but I don't think there's any damage to the paint. Not that I'd notice, the big scrape down the side from the previous owner's attempt at driving by Braille is still there four years later.
Here's me taking photos on a hairpin turn while driving and trying not to pull an Angela. Wow, it sure looks like I was going faster than I actually was in that second picture. I was also leaving notes for myself in my cell voicemail while driving, which I figured was marginally safer than trying to write notes. This is why two people are better than one on these kinds of things. One to take pictures, look at the map, make cell phone calls to themselves, theorize and make notes, and one to keep the car from launching off a cliff.
Anyway, finally get to the sign and see that yes, at some point in time during operation, they did officially change the name to "Wood Mountain Ski Park", to try and get away from the whole 'evil spirits of mysterious mass death' thing. Heh. Or it might have been named that all along, and the locals just kept calling it Forbidden Plateau anyway. Ask anyone in the town how to get to "Wood Mountain Ski Park" and they'll stare at you like you have a fish on your head.
The Forbidden Plateau Lodge had been on the brink of extinction for years, and then there was a fire, and a small earthquake, and the big snow dump that collapsed the lodge and the wreckage being torched repeatedly... It's worse than the castle in the swamp in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. They stopped bothering to try and fix it, I guess. The climate has changed so much that years will go by without enough snow to open a ski lodge in that location anymore.
Taking that picture of the sign was also where I discovered the unmarked and undistinguished loose gravel shoulders. Nothing like getting your car mired on the side of a mountain to make you realize how obsessed you are. Some creative automotive finagling later (involving sliding backwards blindly towards the edge of a cliff, but oh well), I'm back on the road, fishtailing like crazy.
Forbidden Plateau Ski Lodge site
So here we are. It was so quiet. Like nothing. No birds, no bugs, not a single noise. Creepy. Mainly because I was looking for creepy, but there you go.
Okay, so I geeked out a bit when I saw there was actually still the ruined ski lodge and all the lifts and outbuildings and stuff. I had heard they were building condos, so I was expecting maybe cleared lots and construction equipment. There were condos going in down lower, before the end of the paved road (wimps!) So anyway, ruins! The picture above on the left is the foundation of the Day Lodge. It used to be a huge building with a fieldstone fireplace, a restaurant and a bar and such like. Sad really. I think they kept the parking lot plow in that little cave-like nook, but I'm not sure.
Here's the plough nook, as close as I dared get, because of the way my paranoid brain works and the way sound echoes around in semi-enclosed cement areas, it sounded like something was moving around inside. It was about that point that I narrowly avoided stepping in bear droppings. No, there aren't any pictures of that. Ick. I'm pretty sure it was from a bear, unless someone's making a habit of walking an oversized bull mastiff or three out among the ruins.
I clambered up a dirt berm to the top area of ruins, and I wish these photos had turned out better. That's the problem shooting into the sun. I think it was an upper lodge, or just some kind of building at the top end of the ski lift (you can see the chairs hanging on the line still) White, multi story and you could see right through it. Eerie silence combined with abandoned looming structure with me looking for weirdness equals me snapping more crappy pictures. It looked so ominous with the darker clouds coming up behind it, foreboding. I don't know if that comes through in the photos.
You can see the cement walls outlining the lodge areas. It's all full of rubble. Signs of fires and beer drinking, but surprisingly few bits of graffiti. Hm. But there is some red lichen kind of formation, or maybe it's rust. Or maybe its blooooood! Um, no. Heh.
Rubble piles. I only took this picture because it was visually interesting, like one of those puzzles where all the pieces are the same shape you give to people when you want them to go insane.
This is me being so uncharacteristically brave it still freaks me out. See, there's this one section that's surrounded by foundation, so you can't really see into it unless you are on top of a foundation wall. If you can climb a ten foot tall cement wall, great. If not, you have to get on to the cement wall at a place where it's closer to the ground, then walk along the 8 inch wide, crumbly in spots, bits of rebar and metal sticking up in others, foundation wall for a good 10 or 20 yards, until you get to the correct location to see in. I did this, calmly and collectedly, got to the edge of the pit-thing and took a picture of the sharp, jagged, rusty, metal and cement tetanus-inducing contents. Then realized I was standing ten feet in the air.
Now, you have to know something about me to get the significance of this. I do not like heights. I have poor depth perception and balance and half of my light bulbs need replacing but I'm too chicken to get up on an 18 inch square kitchen chair two feet off the soft carpet, while holding on to the wall, doorframe, ceiling, whatever, to put in a new lightbulb. And here I am, on the side of a mountain, no one around for miles, holding on to nothing but a camera, standing on an eight inch wide thing ten feet above the ground, taking pictures of a pit of sharp hurty things I could easily fall into.
After a momentary freeze, I say "Cool!" and blithely take a picture of my car from where I'm standing.
This is what this TV series does to me, and I love it for it!
*ahem*
So anyways, on with the poking around the Plateau.
Most of the ski hill area is taken over by trees and shrubbery now. They're either blurry because evil spirits were sabotaging my camera, or because I have no photography skills. You decide. So, blurry trees on left, blurry little creature nest looking hollow log thing on right. Nature taking over now that man has failed. Bwahahah. Well, until they start building condos anyway. Would add to a P. O.'d nature spirit theory, anyways.
Clouds started descending and brushing the tops of the trees. I thought it looked cool, and maybe ominous so *click*
This used to be the... I guess you'd call it an engine house maybe? For the t-bar for the bunny hill. Wandering around the bunny hill, I heard noises. It had been so quiet all along it actually did freak me out a tiny bit, what with the signs of bear earlier, but it sounded like a river. Off to investigate I go.
So, right on the edge of the old bunny/kiddie slope, right next to where the T-bar used to run there's a great huge ravine with a river somewhere way down there. Way, way, way, down there. Maybe 70 feet down.
I was on this hill a couple times while it was in operation (I wasn't skiing, because I'm completely incompetent. I tried once and they literally made me stop before I hurt people). I remember the big orange net that kept people from sliding off the end into the parking lot, but I don't remember anything remotely like a safety net or snow berm, or wall or anything in that area to keep people from skiing off the edge into the ravine. Hm, and this was the slope for the absolute beginners.
So of course since I'm up there theoretically trying to do a quasi-Winchestery investigation, I come up with a scenario where the lodge owners were appeasing the evil spirits by sacrificing a skier every so often as they skied off the edge into the ravine. The lodge owners couldn't take it anymore, stop allowing it, the snow disappears and the lodge gets destroyed. Of course not really. Just for the sake of hypothetical plot and story. Moving on.
Ooo, more blurry plant life. I took this one because there were hundreds of these little red plants next to the ravine and they looked kind of like spatters of blood. Yeah, morbid, but I'm up there poking around looking for evil spirits, so spatters of blood. They were heavily concentrated around the drop-off into the ravine too. Heh.
More blurry plants, trying to see into the bottom of the ravine. I'm finding it quite fascinating that all the plant life turned out blurry... But not really, because I do suck at taking pictures, and the camera was on 'happy face' mode. Sigh.
Broken down base of a ski lift with a circle of stones in front of it. Yeah, it's a bonfire circle but I'm looking for creepy and ominous here. Speaking of which...
...well, okay, maybe it's not that creepy. This is the remains of the first aid shack. I found it ominous as hell because the light was seriously failing and as soon as I got to around front of it, a cold breeze began kicking up and a sound started slowly building in the silence, which sounded a bit like quiet, deep, chanting. Or growling.
So, yeah. I took the picture and started heading for the car. You know, light failing, bad road, memory card full, battery failing too, ooo, look at the time, gotta go water the cat... and then I realized the noise was just someone on an ATV miles away, echoing in the mountains and had a good giggle at myself and took off for home.
And I totally didn't leave an offering of a piece of beef jerky to appease any disturbed spirits. That fell out of my hand completely by accident. Really.
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This is what I did Monday afternoon. Hope it entertains!