Featured Image: The Den at Dusty’s photo. Intrawest Collection. Does anyone have any information about ‘The Den’? The Museum would love to learn more…
Last week, the adventures of Dusty – the one-time stuffed bucking bronco – from the bar that still bears his name, were chronicled. This mythic tale takes up where the last article trailed off…
The bar and bbq joint re-branded in the late 1980s, setting Dusty off from the raunchy ranch into the ‘realm of mythology.’ The now-battered-up bronco hit the fundraising circuit. He was auctioned off on Timmy’s Telethon. The buyer never picked up his rodeo cocktail champ, and that’s when Ski Patrol stepped in and ‘rescued’ him.
Dusty was set up in the Volly cabin, right next to Honest Eddie: the pop-turned-beer machine. One dollar bought you a brew-with-a-view with the dead horse.
Only in Whistler: Tales of a Mountain Town (Harbour Publishing, 2009), the book by longtime local Stephen Vogler, relays that Dusty also became a prankster. Or perhaps, more aptly, the mascot for mayhem-makers. He showed up on top of the lift evacuation practice tower, surely after going up the Pony Trail: a sky-high stallion who stirred the concerns of animal rights activists, stating it was inappropriate treatment of a dead animal. He was removed.
The bar which still bears Dusty’s moniker claims, “One of the greatest legends of our time, our namesake’s origin is as much a mystery as his whereabouts today.” But…or maybe, more appropriately, well… that is not entirely correct, nor incorrect.
The order of operations of his subsequent adventures is hazy at best: but he did transition to ‘the dark side’. The missing-a-leg Dusty made his way to Blackcomb. He rode by snowmobile and then was transferred to toboggan. The injured horse (whose head apparently may have partly fallen off in the process) was hoped to be moved to the upper alpine, but was only able to make it to the top of Chair 2, halfway up the hill. Vogler’s telling shares many more of the bumps and bruises of the journey, including the fact that in the morning, he was promptly removed and sent to the dump.
But the story doesn’t end there… and as Vogler points out, “perhaps it’s best to leave names out when the police become involved.” And so it goes…the driver of the horse-disposing truck (again, no mention of it being a Bronco!) apparently could not bear the thought “of dumping a once-famous museum-worthy equine in the landfill” (*and as far as Museum records show, no attempt to contact the archivist was made!). The truck rolled over the old log bridge and from there “Dusty made one last jump for freedom” into the Cheakamus River.
But, then there was the kayaker. The kayaker who called the RCMP. And the RCMP who dispatched the dive team and called in a crane to remove the horse who had “clearly stumbled over the rugged banks to its death.” The cops called in the cowboy who ran the stables at Mons, whereupon seeing the horse is reputed to have said “That’s Dusty. He’s been dead for fifty years.”
The RCMP wanted to lay charges. None were ever filed.
Back into the truck Dusty went and back to Blackcomb Base II did Dusty take his last ride. With a match, and a can of gasoline, it is rumoured that Dusty saddled up to become a blazing effigy to Après adventures and the legacy of rodeo-like-ski-resort town…