I can’t say I’m sure how mechanically this would happen; either the campus would shrink down, or the rest of the world’s landmass would rise up. It would be a geological nightmare that would baffle scientists for decades. That said, this might be the ideal solution for when the crisis days of winter hit the mountain.
When the class cancellations finally come — and trust me, they will — there’ll be two types of students on Burnaby campus: the ones who stand awkwardly at the cold bus stop waiting for the slowest transit experience ever and the ones who make the slow pilgrimage down the mountain. The brave few of us who do the latter are going to take our time as we ruin our shoes, pray not to encounter traffic, and tumble down the steeper icy hills.
The flattened mountain is going to give the overflowing buses a much easier drive that doesn’t risk tumbling, while the walkers aren’t going to be descending a -40 degree angle. Traffic’s still going to go slow because nobody owns snow tires, but it’ll at least be manageable.
We’ll still be far from safe considering the snow, the dangerous drivers, and the state of being deep enough in a forest that police and ambulances still can’t come quickly in an emergency. That said, if we aren’t going to be able to solve those problems, the least we could get are some fantastically less treacherous hills.
