Operation: "East Canyon" Part I (Sept. 6, 2008)

Well, it has been a long time since I have posted anything on my bike blog. I have been on many a great bike adventure since my last posting, including an entire summer of riding in Kamloops. My new bike-related goal is to ressurect the East Canyon trail in Golden Ears park (which is already open to mountain bikers) in a more mountain bike friendly trail and eliminate the need for any hike-a-biking.

I began this quest back in the fall of 2007 when I went out for a cross country ride on Menzie's trail (also in Golden Ears park) which is an 8 or 9 km trail from Mike Lake to Gold Creek. However I spent a large portion of my ride dragging branches and fallen trees off the trail, which was apparently too daunting a task for hikers which are content to just walk around it all! The following weekend I returned to Menzie's trail armed with a plain old handsaw and went to work on some 8" diameter fallen cedars that were much too big for me to drag off the trail. After a couple weeks I had managed to single handedly clear away all the large branches and trees that had fallen due to wind storms that fall.

I decide to continue my trail cleanup on East Canyon trail which continues on from Gold Creek parking lot and follows Gold Creek itsef up the valley. I havent been able to get a firm answer yet on the total length of this trail but one source claims it is 15 km one way. I had heard from another source that it is over 20km! I guess there is only one way to find out.

Now armed with a new collapsable saw shoved into my camelbak I headed up the trail from Gold Creek. The main gravel road was in perfect condition for the 5 km until the actual trail starts at Viewpoint beach. From the beach I headed into the denser forrest where I began clearing away big rotton logs lying across the trail and any fallen trees under 10" in diameter. Some sections of the trail were really overgrown and will need to be cut back, I will wait until late fall to due that when there are less leaves. I managed to make it to the 8km mark before the fallen trees were well over 12" in diameter and will need to be powersawed, (I'll have to talk with the park rangers about this). I continued riding and clearing the trail as I went for another kilometer until I got to 9 km beach. Here the trail was not much more than marking tape to follow as I left my bike to bush wack through the foliage until I found the continuing trail. And Wow, the rest of the trail looks like fun, now snaking its way through dark forest with no underbrush excpt the odd fern. I wanted to continue the exploration as this was the farthest I had ever been on this trail, nearly 9.5 km out, the farthest I had been before was only 8 km.

It was now 1:18pm and I had been riding now for 5 hours and I had to get back. It took me less than 2 hours to get back to the Gold Creek parking lot now that I had cleared the trail. There is still a lot of work to be done on this trail and I hope to keep it up and get other groups to help in this quest of building an epic biking trail here in Maple Ridge.