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Map Nature Trails Castlegar Area

WKNA newsletter

All this trail improvement work this summer came about briefly as follows: Back in the winter CFPT had agreed to provide positions and supervision/support for two Katimavik youth volunteers for each of two three-month rotations into the Castlegar area. In mid-April, CFPT hired two young people Tess and Grace to help us meet our agreed-to obligations in our season's cooperation with the local Katimavik organizers and their energetic and delightful youth volunteers. In March through May, Jessica and Erik volunteered with us and in June through August, Rebecca and Charles did likewise. All four were hardworking, reliable and a delight to be with on the trails. [The Canadian Federal Government provides the Katimavik youth volunteers {KVs} approx $3.00/day, 5 days/week, 7 ½ hrs/day plus dormitory room and coop cooking/food allowance and some travel expenses. Excellent value, I reckon, for those of our tax dollars spent that way!]

Our youthful employees were Tess Hotchkis, a 2006 Selkirk College Wildland Rec. program graduate and Grace Bisaro, a backcountry trails enthusiast with serious local trailwork to her credit. Tess and Grace proved out to be an excellent team together and to be energetic, reliable, hardworking and very capable young women, self-reliant and safety conscious. Together they undertook CFPT's duties of caring for guiding on the job and ferrying our KVs between various home locations and our various job sites for the four-plus months of their employment, and of advancing CFPT's main summers' objectives of fixing up our many kilometers of trails, including construction of a couple of bridges and boardwalks. Tess' report in this Newsletter, together with Gordon Hollingshead's, provides readers with an overview of all the work accomplished

CFPT's role with Katimavik started in early March, before we'd got organized to hire Tess and Grace. I volunteered to provide fulltime supervision and guidance for our KVs on the trails while working with them, and to car ferry them back to their homes after work each day through March and early April. President John Mansbridge liaised with Katimavik local coordinators throughout the whole six months plus of our involvement and through March, drove our KVs to the Brilliant Park n Ride. Elaine Robinson, Lawrence Redfern, Ken Brownlie and Gordon Hollinshead also provided occasional valuable driving and other support and/or day supervision to our KVs when needed in March and April. Poul Henricksen and Lawrence looked after paymaster/accounting and contract- drafting.

The result of all this CFPT Spring and Summer activities is that, as Gordon says in his article in this Newsletter, the condition of CFPT's trail system "has never been better" and our trails are ready for lots of enjoyment by members and friends through Fall season '07 and hopefully way on into the future. So everyone do get out and enjoy them.

By way of a footnote: A new, low level access to the Skattebo Reach (SR) and Brilliant Overlook (BO) trails has been routed from the north end of the Brilliant Park n Ride on HWY 3A. The new section of trail follows the natural gas line north towards the Kootenay river, it crosses some drainage ditches via the new, green ('Mans')bridge and then traverses the steep side banks of the rocky hwy fill that accesses the south end of the Hwy 3A bridge at Brilliant. The gaps and irregularities in this rocky material have been filled with a dump of 1 inch, screened gravel purchased by CFPT and positioned by our summer work teams. The trail then passes under the south end of the HWY bridge and joins the south access to the old Doukhobor suspension bridge rejoining the original trailhead to the Brilliant Canyon section of the SR trail. Because of unavoidable delays in the completion of the Brilliant Expansion Project and in the commissioning of the new powerhouse there, this new access to the SR