By whatever name you may know the hike – Mac’s Trail, Kuskanax Trail, the route to Vicki’s View – the Trails Society is hard at work to make more of it for you to enjoy. Work is about to get underway to extend the trail 5.25 kilometres up to the summit and over to connect it with the back side of Turner Road.
That’s the plan, but Trails Society founding member and board director Barb Chwachka says work will be done until the money runs out, which isn’t really a big issue when you’re talking trails.
“The neat thing about trails is that you build them one kilometre at a time,” said Chwachka. “We’ll do what we can this year.” And every bit will simply build more ground to hike through.
The Society will likely be hiring a few people for a couple months of work, Chwachka said, because there is just way too much work for the volunteers. They have been fortunate to get funding from the CBT, KSCU, the Nakusp Community Foundation and the Rec. Commission for the trail building.
But the new trail isn’t the only thing the Trails Society has been up to.
They also took on the repair of a bad washout on the Trailway path that runs behind the Village parallel to Highway 6. After determining who had stewardship, the Society applied for stewardship and got the job. With the help of Reg and Chad Gustafson’s donation of time and machinery and other local contractors who donated rock work, the trail has been repaired, making it safe for both motorized and non-motorized users to pass through.
The Hot Springs trail has also received a visit from the Society which has been repairing and replacing small bridges and removing trees blown down by winds from across the path.
Eventually the group would like to redesign some of the area trails, said Chwachka, who pointed out that many of the washouts that need cleaning up could be avoided by a different trail design.