For the better part of a year and a half, Selkirk Planning and Design has been working on a Trails and Outdoor Recreation Strategy for the District of Tumbler Ridge
This strategy provides “a long-term framework to guide the sustainable development, management and promotion of Tumbler Ridge’s trail and outdoor recreation network.”
As part of that, the company has catalogued Tumbler Ridge’s many official and unofficial trails, totalling 108 trails that cover 1,236 km of terrain in 13 trail areas.
This is not static, notes the company, and in the last four years, there’s been new mountain biking trails and motorized trails developed.
Of those, 48 trails—867 km—are unsanctioned in at least one season and maintained by volunteers, without formal partnership agreements in place.
In addition to the inventory, there are infrastructure and organizational assessments, a Destination Development Framework, prioritized recommendations, implementation guidance and performance monitoring measures.
The goal of the document is to help in decision making around trails and other recreation infrastructure, not just for the District, but for the Tumbler Ridge Outdoor Recreation Association (TRORA), the Geopark, other recreation organizations and other community partners.
In the past 18 months, there has been community and stakeholder engagement, field verification, GIS mapping, trail inventory work, infrastructure assessment, a Destination Development Framework and implementation planning.
In addition, the strategy contains seven main goals and 129 prioritized recommendations related to organizational capacity, trail formalization, infrastructure, management practices, mapping and communications, visitor experience and regional partnerships.
“Although the Strategy includes a Destination Development Framework and recommendations related to tourism, marketing and visitor experience,” writes Jessie Olsen, Director of Economic and Community Development in her report to council, “it is not intended to replace a comprehensive tourism strategy. The District’s existing tourism strategy, Land of Ancient Footprints, Land of New Discoveries: Tumbler Ridge Tourism Strategy 2020–2024, has reached the end of its intended planning period and is due to be updated when staff capacity and funding allow.”
Instead, the document focuses primarily on “trails, outdoor recreation and the visitor experiences that support those assets.”
The goal is to establish Tumbler Ridge as the premier year-round destination for trails-based adventure. “Experience wilder-than-wild, rugged mountain landscapes and thundering waterfalls carved from the history of the Earth, where jagged rock outcrops and dinosaur fossils fire imagination,” says the document.
The document identifies 90 trails that are used in the summer, from signed and gazetted trails like the Windfall Lake trail, to the unsigned and unmaintained but increasingly popular route to Mount Crum. In total, 46 of the trails are established, 44 are unsanctioned, with another 22 planned and seven proposed.
That also includes water routes, like paddling the Murray River from the boat launch near Flatbed to Lone Prairie.
Trail counter data collected over the last five years shows the network is being used more intensively as time goes on. Hiking remains the dominant activity, with the largest share of recorded users in every year of the monitoring period. Motorized use is also on the upswing, though it is harder to collect data on that, as some of the ATV routes are also on industrial use roads.
“Mountain biking has emerged as a new segment of measurable size, with the TR Mountain Bike counter recording roughly 3,500 trail passes in each of its first two full years.” Of course, that does not count unique visitors, and many of those would have been yours truly.
“The most heavily used trails (Quality Falls, Cabin Pool, Kinuseo Falls, and Shipyard-Titanic) continue to reflect the strong draw of the Geopark’s signature waterfall and viewpoint destinations.”
There are 13 trail counters along the hiking trails, with 18,320 hikers recorded last year, up from 15,185 recorded two years earlier, or an increase of 21 percent.
The fourth most popular trail (or group of trails) was the new Tumbler Ridge Mountain Biking Trail, with 3,546 visitors. That speaks to the popularity of mountain biking in the area, though it should be noted that the main trail is open to hiking, so not all those trips up and/or down are necessarily by mountain bikers. As well, the counter does not record unique visitors, so a biker making three laps of the trail system would be counted as three visits.
All told, there were nine trails that saw more than 2,000 visitors in 2024–25, and another seven that saw over 1,000 visitors.
The purpose of the strategy is not merely to document the trails, but to come up with ways to improve the trail system and establish best practices for trail management. Indeed, there are 140 recommendations across seven key goals.
These goals are: (excerpted from the document):
Strengthen TRORA as the Coordination Hub & Build Long-Term Organizational Capacity
“As the umbrella coordination body for trail user groups, a strengthened TRORA can centralize administrative functions such as grant applications, insurance coordination, and permitting, reducing the burden on individual clubs while providing shared services that smaller groups cannot develop independently. Across the broader network, prioritize volunteer recruitment, succession planning, and operational support to formalize club structures, reduce volunteer burnout, and build the administrative foundations that allow groups to access stable funding, manage infrastructure, and plan beyond the current season.”
Formalize Trails for Responsible Trail Management and To Access Sustainable Funding
Formalizing trail status unlocks access to government grants, stable funding streams, and provincial support that are unavailable to unsanctioned trails, while providing the legal foundation needed to expand and improve the network responsibly.
Expand and Improve Trails and Facilities
These are the foundational investments that shape the quality of every visit to the Geopark, and ensuring they keep pace with growing demand is essential to protecting both the visitor experience and the natural environment.
Build and Follow Trail Management Best Practices for Long-Term Sustainability
A growing trail network requires disciplined management practices that direct limited resources toward the trails and infrastructure that deliver the greatest value, ensuring that the network’s scale remains aligned with the collective capacity to maintain it to a standard that protects both the visitor experience and the natural environment.
Strengthen Trail Information, Communication and Mapping
Establish a single, authoritative source for trail information, conditions, closures, permits, and safety guidance across the Geopark.
Accurate, accessible, and up-to-date information is the foundation of a positive trail experience. Its absence was identified as the number one community need. Centralizing this information reduces confusion, improves safety, supports compliance with caribou closures and motorized restrictions, and ensures that the trail network’s growing user base can plan trips with confidence.
Enhance the Visitor and Tourism Experience
Strengthen the trail-based contribution to Tumbler Ridge’s tourism offering through signature trail experiences, expanded programming, and year-round recreation products that extend demand beyond the summer peak.
Trails are Tumbler Ridge’s distinguishing tourism product, and the experiences delivered on them shape the impression every visitor carries home. TRORA and its member clubs are best placed to deliver that recreation product, while accommodation, guiding businesses, services, and destination marketing remain led by the District, the Geopark, and local tourism operators.
Strengthen Collaboration and Regional Partnerships
Build effective coordination among trail user groups, the District, provincial government, First Nations, resource industry partners, and neighbouring communities. Strengthen communication with the province on permitting and trail formalization, pursue meaningful engagement with First Nations on shared stewardship, and work with resource industry partners to secure long-term access planning for trails dependent on resource roads. Rather than competing with surrounding communities, invest in connecting trail systems and shared recreation products that position the broader region as a destination.
A coordinated approach reduces duplication, presents a cohesive identity to visitors, and ensures tourism development complements the interests of all partners.
Each of these goals has a series of proposed recommendations. For instance, there are ten recommendations for goal one: strengthening TRORA. These include a Municipal and Regional District Tax (MRDT) to establish dedicated funding, expanding the TRORA Youth Division into a youth trail stewardship program, partner with the school district to develop outdoor recreation programs for school kids, and developing an annual training program for trail maintenance.
Note that a Municipal and Regional District Tax would be a tax on short term accommodations, such as hotels, motels and B&Bs, and not something residents would have to bear.
“Based on estimated annual accommodation revenue of $6.67 million,” says the strategy, “a two to three percent MRDT would generate approximately $133,000–$200,000 annually. This would be the first stable, dedicated funding source for tourism development in Tumbler Ridge. The District of Tumbler Ridge would administer the MRDT program, with TRORA supported through it as the designated trail stewardship and recreation coordination body.”
In order for a MRDT, or so-called hotel tax, to go through, a majority endorsement from accommodation (51 percent of accommodators representing 51 percent of rooms) would be needed, as well as a Five-Year Strategic Business Plan, and a detailed One-Year Tactical Plan. The process typically takes two or more years to receive provincial approval.”
Trent is the publisher of Tumbler RidgeLines.
