As the snow began to melt in June, several of the extra clear panels stored in the maintenance shed went missing. A cursory search around the Resort and Alpine Village turned up nothing, and Resort officials were puzzled as to what happened to them. That is, until a chance encounter with a visiting biologist from Iceland.
Lagar Fljotsormurinn, who has a special interest in British Columbia sasquatch activity, spent two weeks at the Resort working on her thesis about sasquatch habitat. Fljotsormurinn was following up on a report that came out in 2011 about yeti nests discovered in trees in Russia. She wanted to compare those nesting habits with the habitat of North American sasquatch.
Fljotsormurinn hired an experienced guide from Tri-Coast Backcountry Expeditions to take her into some of the more remote areas of Strathcona Provincial Park in the hopes she would find evidence of this habitat.
“The karst formations on Vancouver Island provide a rich network of caves that would be ideal for sasquatch to take refuge along their migratory paths,” she said.
“I wanted to see whether there was historical evidence that sasquatch used the caves as they traversed the Island.” She wasn’t prepared for what she found, though.
“We were hiking along the Resort’s boundary along the ridge above the North Bowl, when I saw something glinting in the sun,” Fljotsormurinn said in some e-mail correspondence with the Marmot newspaper. “I thought it was a pop can or wrapper from a freeze-dried meal some hiker had left.”
When she and her guide got closer, however, they discovered what had caused the glint in the midday sun: the missing Magic Carpet panels. The panels were jammed against the entrance to a cave that the guide had never noticed before.
“We were so excited,” Fljotsormurinn said. “Not only did we find evidence that sasquatch existed in this area, but we were stunned to see they have assimilated in an area so close to civilization.”
The terrain is steep in that area, on the edge of the Outback, and the snow is deep from December until July, when the unrelenting sun finally penetrates the icy underlay. The panels were likely used to give additional shelter from the rivulets of water cascading down the rock face above the cave, she said.
“Either that, or they just think the Magic Carpets are really cool living spaces and they wanted one for themselves.”