Mountain bike riders who discovered damaged trails at the Pidherny Recreation Site in Prince George as a result of fire mitigation work conducted by the province during the winter and early spring have tempered their initial criticisms about the project.
The trail damage left by heavy equipment used to remove as much combustible brush and dead snags as possible and thin trees clumped close to each other to prevent crowning fires was temporary and in most cases did not affect long sections of the trails.
“I think some of the people who were really vocal at the time, it was overstated,” said Bret Hutchinson, the Pidherny director of the Prince George Cycling Club. “I think the outrage was more around the logging portion, but there wasn’t much damage done to the trails themselves.
“There was a handful of spots that needed repairs but I would say that 99 per cent of it, there was no damage to the actual trail.”
Starting in December and continuing through February, the Pidherny Wildfire Risk Reduction Project conducted by the Ministry of Forests focused on the lower trails at the popular recreation site, located on a large slope that borders a residential area on the north side of North Nechako Road.
Built by volunteers over the past three decades, part of the trails are on Crown land within the Fraser-Fort George regional district in an area the Prince George Cycling Club manages. The other Pidherny section of trails is within the city boundary on land over which the club has no licence of occupation management agreement. About 20 trails were damaged, including a 100-metre section of one of them.
The ministry had planned to conduct trail repairs this summer in the second phase of the project but Hutchinson said club members took it upon themselves to do much of that work rather than wait for contractors.
“We have a limited summer here and people aren’t going to wait three months to recreate, so volunteers went out and fixed those spots so we could use the are again,” said Hutchinson.
“It comes down to them being them realistic on projects and timelines and have the contractor starting up at the beginning of May to fix those things and not planning it for later in the summer. That was the biggest issue.”
Removing trees and brush has improved sightlines. With fewer blind corners, Hutchinson said rider safety has improved because riders can see each other approaching on the trails.
The Pidherny project is a test case for a new system of forest management to better protect populated areas and costly infrastructure and Hutchinson said the ministry could have done a better job communicating details about how the project would actually unfold.
He expects work to thin the forest on the upper trail section of Pidherny, expected sometime this winter, will be less controversial.
