After more than a week of being suspended on the side of The Papoose mountain on the Sea to Sky Highway, a hollowed-out Volkswagen Beetle was removed on Thursday morning. A helicopter was brought in to connect to the Beetle, lifting it up and off the mountain before lowering it down onto the Sea to Sky Gondola parking lot. The Ministry of Environment had closed the area for safety reasons. “Yesterday, they spent most of the day pulling the car off the cliff, so they actually attached wheels to the frame of the vehicle to not damage the rock,” says Megan Kobitzsch from BC Parks. The Volkswagen was disassembled into four parts before being put into a net and picked up by the helicopter. The vehicle was placed on the mountain on April Fools’ Day as a prank, but whoever was behind it is still unknown. The prank drew some criticism from people living in the area, including from Squamish Mayor Armand Hurford, who says the area holds important cultural meaning. “This is an area that deserves respect and that wasn’t the case here,” said Hurford in a statement to CTV News. Similar pranks in the past have been linked to UBC Engineering students. In 2014, a similar Volkswagen was placed atop UBC’s Ladner Clock Tower, and a failed attempt to suspend a car from the Second Narrows Bridge resulted in five students being arrested in 2009. The UBC Engineering Undergraduate Society has denied any involvement.
