Charles Helm
The trails don’t maintain themselves… that is one self-evident take-home message in 2021. It has been a brutal fall, winter and spring, as far as deadfall on the hiking trails goes. It started with an unusually severe windstorm in November that seemed to target the Flatbed Creek area, resulting in masses of deadfall. Throw big dead beetle-killed pine trees into the mix, and now add damaged large spruce from the spruce-bark beetle, and it is a recipe for massive blowdown.
The Kinuseo Falls viewpoints trail (distance 1.5 km) alone had 100 large down trees, and the Barbour Falls trail, just 1 km in length, had 60 trees down on it. Closer to home, the trail to the dinosaur tracks on Flatbed Creek and associated trails also had more than 100 down trees. This called for a substantial effort from volunteers of the Wolverine Nordic and Mountain Society (WNMS), who maintain the trails, having initially designed and built most of them. The goal was to get onto the trails the moment the ice left them, ahead of the tourists and hikers. As a result, at the beginning of June, the trails are cleared and free of deadfall, and the tree count stands at over 600.
The parking lots at the trailheads tell the story of increasing use. The work of the past few decades, that has created 30 hiking trails and a total of around 100 km of trail, has paid off, and Tumbler Ridge has become a hiking destination of importance in BC. Furthermore, many of the trails lead to Geosites of the Tumbler Ridge UNESCO Global Geopark, so everybody wins when the trails are well maintained.
How does one get rid of 600 trees? One tree at a time, but not on windy days. These are indeed times for hikers to listen to the old adage, and avoid the forest when strong winds are a-blowing. Finally, a message to anyone finding a tree down across a hiking trail: please report this to the staff at the Visitor Centre, who will report this to WNMS.
