Squamish hikers who are up for a long trek are in for a treat, as long as they don’t mind a bit of bushwhacking.
A new 70-kilometre hiking trail from Squamish to Port Mellon on the Sunshine Coast is now passable, but needs more work until it can officially open to the public.
“The first six kilometres are super buff and good to go, even on a mountain bike,” said Steve Wheeler, a Squamish resident who helped work on the trail last weekend.
“Then it gets gnarly. There are definitely sections you have to climb.”
The group Wheeler worked with on the weekend cleared 300 feet, but they still have around another 500 feet to go. He estimates it will take another month or longer to get the trail ready.
The trail comes from the Squamish Valley, where the only bridge across the Squamish River is along Ashlu Creek, up to Pokosha Pass, along Clowhom Lake across the head of Salmon Inlet, along Sechelt Creek to Polytope Pass and down Rainy River where it ends in Port Mellon. Most amenities, including restaurants and hotels, are 17 kilometres away in Gibsons.
The trail has been a labour of love for a small group of people in Squamish and the Sunshine Coast for a few years now, headed by Geoff Breckner of Squamish.
The route makes use of existing trails, logging roads and hydro line rights of way, and volunteers have been putting in connector trails to link everything up.
Currently there are three sections that are passable only with some bushwhacking, so there’s still work to be done before the trail can be officially opened. But, armed with a compass and a good pair of hiking boots, it’s doable.
“There is still a lot of work to be done, but we can see that the end is close,” said Wheeler, who is excited the project is near completion.
The idea of building a road for vehicles to link the mainland to the Sunshine Coast has been tossed around for decades with no results yet.
Proponents say providing options other than air or ferry travel would increase tourism and economic opportunities, while some people against the project say it would wreck the small-town atmosphere on the coast. The provincial government is studying this “fixed link” and the results are due in late fall.
In August, Sunshine Coast resident Vance Culbert ran the route in 13 hours, an impressive feat considering he had to bushwhack his way through several sections.
“At the moment [going on foot is] the easiest way to get through there,” Culbert said.
“[Most of] the trail isn’t in good enough shape yet to get bikes through. They still need a bit of work and some people out on either end to clear the trail a bit more before you can take a bike through it. So, until that is finished, running is the way to go.”
“It’s a beautiful run,” he said, noting the scenery is varied along the route that winds through different types of forests at various elevations, past pristine lakes, around mountainsides and over two mountain passes.
“You’ll see the back side of the Tantalus Range, which a lot of people don’t ever see.”
When finished, the trail will be a hiking/walking/biking route that is accessible most of the year but closed in the winter due to snow at higher elevations.
Culbert’s 76-year-old father, Richard, has been involved for about a year working on the Sunshine Coast side, and for the past few months Culbert has been helping with some flagging of the higher sections as his father’s health hasn’t allowed him to make the trek.
In the future, Richard said, “a lot of work is going to have to be done by parties out of the head of the Salmon Inlet who are willing to camp a couple of nights and put the trails in from that side.”
Richard was pleased to hear of his son’s journey and to get a first-hand account of how the route measured up on Aug. 12.
“It’s now certainly been shown that the route is viable,” he added.
