BC Parks - Trail User Agreement + Burnt Rock

Met with BC Parks officials today and hammered out a tentative agreement for the South Okanagan Trail Alliance (and thus, PACA) to sign a five-year park use agreement. This means a lot going forward; easier access to construction and maintenance of structures (eg; bridges), creation and maintenance of trails as well as speeding up the sanctioning process for existing trails in BC Parks up and down the valley corridor.

Parks staff are really great to deal with and I can see agreements like this being nothing but positive going forward.

In other news; I checked out the route for the pending Burnt Rock Extension on Campbell's east slope. Most of the routes that we require are already in place in the form of cow-trails, so getting Mike Street to sign off on a new sanctioned connector shouldn't be too difficult. I've yet to approach him as I have a confirmed trail project, a PENTICTON sign repaint and the new Trail Alliance to roll out May 1st on my plate at the moment...

Will seek 'the word' on the B.R. Extn. in the first week of May.

TRAIL.LOVE.MON!

A.

Excellent News!

Well, that wraps it up for five years - signed a land use agreement with Parks this morning! We now have full-on legal access to build and maintain trails in three local BC Parks Protected Areas; Skaha Bluffs Provincial Park, White Lake Grasslands Protected Area and South Okanagan Grasslands Protected Area.

This is by no means a blank slate that allows us to go in and construct trails willy-nilly, every which way, but it is a really solid foundation for us to maintain, sanction and build new trails - - while working closely with BC Parks.

This is the exact same process that the Vernon club went through - and now look at the mega-trail networks they have in BC Parks! This Land Use Agreement is a freakishly great thing!!!

As Tom Petty says, "The Future Is Wide Open"

Andrew
www.southokanagantrailalliance.com