Sylvie Paillard
[email protected]
Tourists driving by Shannon Falls Provincial Park will see more park and less parking lot after a boundary change is complete.
The 87-hectare Class A park is losing one hectare to accommodate the expansion of Highway 99, the Ministry of Environment announced last week.
The new boundary will take away a third of the front parking lot while adding more spaces to the back parking lot. It will also lose a ditch and " a sliver" off a short cliff on the south side of the park, said Tom Bell, the ministry's acting regional manager for the Lower Mainland and Sea to Sky.
The front picnic and concession area will not be impacted, nor will the climbing area known as the Papoose, said Bell. The only trail impacted will be the trailhead to the Papoose, which was moved last year to accommodate the work being done. The boundaries were changed despite the park's designation under the Park Protection Act of BC.
"Before we go and change it [a park] in the legislature, we go through a very careful review and consult with the public, with First Nations etc.," said Bell. "That did happen at Shannon Falls. The consultation occurred through the review for Sea to Sky Highway process."
There were no concerns with the change in parking lots, according to Bell. But the BC Climbers Access Society has expressed concern over the loss of parking areas directly off the highway.
"There will be few non-official parking areas when the project is complete," states the society website.
Bell said rockclimbers did express concern over the loss of the cliff, but those worries were resolved, said Bell. Calls to the BC Climbers' Access Society went unreturned by press time, but the website states: "The highway project will obliterate what is now the start of the trail to the Papoose. As part of preliminary work, the Access Society agreed with the Ministry of Transportation and B.C. Parks to re-route the trail. It is almost complete. The new trail leaves the Shannon Falls Provincial Park access road just before it crosses Shannon Creek (south). A new descent route, along the north shoulder of the Papoose, was also created - it involves scrambling, but a hand line may be placed in key areas."
