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Alberni Valley Trails Booklet
As I have said on the Rainbird web page, there are over a hundred hiking trails in the Alberni Valley of various lengths and difficulty. The trouble is that very few of them are mapped - until now that is.Just recently the Alberni Environmental Coalition published the second edition of a trail guide that gives excellent directions on how to get to the trail heads of 19 of the most interesting ones. They are graded by difficulty as well. No only does each trail have very detailed information on getting to the trail head starting from the Local Visitor Information Centre, but also there is a contour map showing the trail and a trail description. Each hiking trail has been plotted using GPS coordinates. And there are sections on essential gear, safety and trail ethics. It’s one of the best guides I’ve seen.
You can find copies of the hiking trail guide at the Visitor Information Centre and various other locations around Port Alberni. They cost about $11. Two dollars of this goes to maintain the trails in the valley. Or if you emailed the Alberni Valley Environmental Coalition, they would send you one. The email address address can be found on this page: http://www.portaec.net/trail/index.html .
The first edition of the guide was published in 1999. However because of the many changes in the Alberni Valley, in land ownership, logging, and in roads being de-commissioned there was a need to up date it. However before the update was completed the Environmental Coalition and the Friends of the Log Train Trail realized that all the trails in the Alberni Valley should be plotted from GPS data onto Regional District maps (For eastern Canadians and Americans, that’s like County maps). This would give them a better chance of them being left undisturbed when any developments were being considered. This process took over a year to complete, because they all have to be hiked with a GPS and then plotted. The Regional District was thankfully able to help with a small grant.
There are several other trail guides for hiking on Vancouver Island. But none specialize in the Alberni Valley. However, a really good companion to the trail guide is Vancouver Island Backroad Mapbook by Mussio Ventures. They make a variety of map books covering most of Canada. The one for Vancouver Island is excellent. They try hard to keep it up to date. I gave them a few updates and corrections for the Alberni Valley. Here’s their web site http://www.backroadmapbooks.com/
One of the people who put a lot of energy into creating this edition of the hiking trail guide is a fellow called Craig Wagnell, or Quagger. He GPS’d many of the trails you find in the book, and many others too. He has his own web page, http://www.islandhikes.com/ . If you are into vigorous backcountry hiking and bushwhacking, hook up with this guy. He has mapped a good number of trails and routes in many areas of Vancouver Island as well as the valley. And they are all on his site. What’s really cool is that he has little dots along his route. If you click on them a picture pops up of what it looks like at that point. Awesome!Two other key people in this venture are Rick Avis and Harold Carlson. Each of them were instrumental in cataloguing all the trails, selecting and preparing them for publication.Sandy McRuer