Glenda Luymes reports in the Vancouver Sun: As some resource roads across the province fall into disrepair, including those that lead to provincial parks, campsites, fishing lakes, hunting, ski-touring and snowmobiling areas, outdoor groups are working to save them. A survey created by the Outdoor Recreation Council of B.C. opened last week to understand which roads matter most for outdoor recreation.
In the Kootenays, off-road-users have joined landowners to ask the province to maintain foot and ATV access to the Incomappleux Forest Service Road. After a rock slide 20 years ago damaged a key bridge, concerns about safety and a lack of funds prompted the government to recently announce that it’s deactivating the road, which provides access to about 150 private properties.
In northeastern B.C., hikers and campers report Kakwa Park may be more easily accessed through Alberta than B.C. due to poor road conditions, despite it being a B.C. provincial park.
And near Nelson, access to Silver Cup Ridge, a popular snowmobiling area, is in jeopardy due to deactivation of Rady Creek FSR.
“The biggest issue for us is bridges,” said Doug Brackett, vice-president of the B.C. Snowmobile Federation and member of the Nelson club.
While the club typically holds a permit to create and maintain snowmobile trails that run on top of resource roads in the winter, they don’t maintain the bridges on the roads, many of which were designed for large logging trucks. That level of engineering makes bridges costly to maintain long after trucks no longer use the route, and as a result, roads are deactivated rather than saved.
“There’s no legal device to decommission the road to a standard that maintains public recreation,” said Brackett.
He’s seen various types of deactivations, including gates, culvert removal, the creation of “tank traps” or trenches and berms, and roads completely cut out of the hillside to prevent access.
“A lot of money is spent on deactivations,” he said. “In some cases, that money could provide decades of maintenance funds.”
Read the full article here: https://vancouversun.com/news/key-bc-outdoor-recreation-access-in-jeopardy-groups-say