Found – An Old Trail Booklet For the Alberni Valley
Recently a friend emailed me a surprising file. It was a PDF file (That’s Adobe Acrobat to some) of an old trail booklet of the Alberni Valley. Greg had kept this booklet, which is really just photocopies of drawn maps and of typed descriptions, for many years. Recently he scanned it and sent it to me. Boy, it really takes me back. I had to reminisce with it a bit.
Many of the trails are still there as they were when the booklet was created 20 years ago. But many have changed, grown over, or been logged across. And there are new trails created since this became available.
The first trail mentioned is the APL Trail. Now this trail has a new name. It is the Log Train Trail, one of the most popular, and controversial trails in the valley. It is popular with the hikers & walkers, with the equestrians, with the mountain bikers, and with the ATV crowd. This popularity with such a diverse group of users is a recipe for controversy. There has been no agreed resolution as to how this trail is to be used. So if you go, be prepared for any kind of user.
Some of the trails on this booklet aren’t used any more. An example is the China Creek Trail. It started on the West side of the bridge over China Creek near the China Creek Marina. I went to have a look at it a couple of years ago. It was still there, but badly grown over with Salmonberry. There were also a few trees down across the trail. I brushed some of it out a bit, but it hardly seemed worth it if no one remembered it. At one time there was a nice kiosk with a sign on it, and interpretive signs posted along the trail. Now they have all rotted into the rainforest.
Others have changed drastically. The Passive Reflector Trail was an old grown-over logging road for most of the route. With a hike up to a rock where there was a Passive Reflector for telephone communication. That facility is now a Telus cell phone tower. And the trail up to it is a road again with recent logging along it. However the view of Port Alberni from the other side of the inlet is still there.
The trail to Ward lake is about to change drastically. The land around Ward Lake is owned by a company called Island Timberlands. You can guess what their business is. And they have been going at it with a vengeance around the Alberni Valley. Already there are a couple of large clearcuts on the road in to the trailhead. When I walked the trail the other day I found fresh ribbons marking the centreline of a proposed road to be built to access more timber. Pretty soon this trail that once was a logging road will be a logging road again.
Many of the trails are hardly hiking trails at all. They are very short trails of the sort you would find around any town anywhere. The kind kids take as a short cut to school or the ball field. The ones you build tree forts or, now-a-days mountain bike courses, beside.
Perhaps there is certain trendiness in trails. Some trails seem to fall into disuse after a generation, and new trails are built. Or perhaps some trails don’t grab the imagination as much as they used to.
It’s fun to reminisce a little about some of the hikes you have done and about some of the places you have been. I have posted the booklet in three separate files on this site. The files are quite large, so if you have dial-up, go have a cup of coffee if you download them.
Hiking Trails of the Alberni Valley 1