25 Years of Blazing Trails

By John Dudley, in his own words.

Opening day of The Totally Unnecessary Trail June 20th, 2000

A few years ago, Louis Peterson asked me to give a talk about the history of our trail system and show some pictures of us working on the trails.

I finally buckled under the pressure, spent days going through 19 years of photographs and attempted to put together my first PowerPoint presentation.

Much to my horror I found that Louis advertised my talk as “The Mountain Forest, Trails, Flora and Fauna”, so before I started to talk I thought I had better say that as far as the flora goes, in the Spring there are a lot of flowers along the face of the Pit that were hydro seeded by MOT both indigenous and non indigenous and in the forest there are the most incredible variety of mosses., ferns, salal and mahonia.

As far as the fauna goes, during all the years of working with groups and on my own I have seen a lot of squirrels, dug out a few newts by mistake and once in the middle of winter heard a pack of coyotes howling on the mountain below. People always want to hear about encounters with bears and cougars but although they probably watch us, we have never seen them.

Having said that Ken More was surprised by a bear in recent times that was looking down at him as he was sawing through a fallen tree. Ken tried to be friendly and said “Hello Bear” which made the bear somewhat aggressive, but it quickly lost interest and wandered off into the forest.

Louis also asked me to show lots of pictures of people working on the trails, but I have hardly any, since I was also working and didn't have any time for that sort of nonsense, so I have just a few pictures of people either bending down or having their lunch breaks.

In February 1998 Rose and I returned to the village after living in West Van for 7 years.

For a year we concentrated on landscaping our garden and then on June 20^th, 1999, at 3.00 a.m. I woke up with the idea of building a trail to link up with the Trans Canada Trail at Horseshoe Bay. I think this must have been inspired by all the hype about the Trans Canada Trail and having it opened by the year 2000.

A few days later on Canada Day at the beach I mentioned my thoughts to Rudy and Trudi Luethy and they said if ever I got started they would like to help.

On December 5^th, 1999 I started clearing debris on the old Unnecessary Trail and cajoled Herb Johnston into joining me for a couple of days starting on December 30^th. On January 15th, 2000, with Herb and my wife Rose back teaching I was joined by Rudy and Trudi Luethy and production got into full gear.

It took us a total of 34 days from where they joined me to the top of the bluff which you can see clearly from the Harvey Creek Bridge. This included several days of just doing upgrading in areas that we had passed through very quickly. Work went on until June 20^th, which was two days before the opening to the residents of Lions Bay on June 23^rd, 2000.

As the trail proceeded towards what used to be called Vronski’s bluff, we thought it should be more than just a way to get to the bluff and that areas should be cleared up so that it became more like a park. One of the reasons for this was that we were amazed at the different types of vegetation and terrain that existed in such a small area. We realized that probably people would be happy to just walk to a particular area and enjoy it rather than having a need to push on to the end every time.

On opening day I remember standing on Vronski's Bluff, looking up and saying we should carry on up the mountain, returning a different route and Rudy saying, “You've got to be kidding”.

Six and a half years later the loop was completed with the help of many people, some of who were in between jobs, recently retired or could only join us on weekends.

We originally named the trail the Totally Unnecessary Trail but after the tragic death of Erin Moore on December 22nd, 2014, changed the name in her honour and shortly after created Erin's Enchanted Forest. Since then, there has been an annual hike to Erin's Enchanted Forest every December.

When we had almost completed the trail Trudi kept bugging me about an old spur off the Lions Trail where there was once a beautiful view that she used to go to escape from the world. We went to have a look at it and decided it should become a loop trail where people could get a quick workout. When it was finished, I thought it would be a a nice hour's stroll until some of the extreme people in the village started running it in 23 minutes.

We had almost completed Trudi's Trail, work on widening the Squamish Highway was in full swing when I was asked if it would be possible to build a trail linking up Brunswick Beach to the village to celebrate it's centenary as a settlement. I was invited to attend the dreaded HAG meetings which seemed to drag on for years and one day after the Remembrance Day Ceremony at the hall told Rudy I was off to find the Northwest Passage and we went scrambling through the forest in search of a route.

Many of you helped with this trail and both MOT and Kiewit were very supportive, even lending us an operator with a big backhoe to dig the section across the Pit.

To help alleviate the parking situation in the summer and on weekends with people going up the Lions, Pat Harrison who volunteered with Trails BC got a team of people together and roughed in a trail from the school parking lot to the beginning of the Lions Trail.

After we had completed the Centennial Trail, our team worked on improving the trails that Pat had roughed in and named them the Upper and Lower Harrison in his honour. Just so that we wouldn't get too bored we also built a connecting trail from Sunset down to Mountain Drive.

Over the years I had often looked up at the bluffs as you turn the steep bend on Bayview Road above the school and thought there had to be a good view of the village from up there. With the help of Ken More who loves to head off into the bush where there are no trails, we found a route and the Sleepless Nights Trail came into being. Its name came about one day when one of our crew called me and said several of them were waking up in the night in a cold sweat dreading going up there to work again. (This was in a particularly steep section where people kept showering rocks on the heads of the people working down below.) So a couple of us went up and worked on this section until we reached a relatively safe area and coaxed them all back up again.

The Sleepless Nights Trail runs off Trudi's Trail and because I love loop trails has a Southern and Northern section.

Later on, because a lot of us hated the first steep bend on the Lions Trail, we built the Missing Link which hooks up to Trudi's Trail.

Ken's Bluffs were discovered by Ken More one day when he was out in his kayak and noticed that there had to be a good viewpoint from up there, realizing they must be just below the upper Erin Moore Trail. After we built a trail from the Erin Moore Trail down to them Ken decided that we should be able to build a connecting trail linking up to the lower Erin Moore Trail and one day when we were up there we took off bushwacking down with Katherine Mueller to find a route.

After years of working on the trails with us it was decided that Richard and Pat Grass should be mentioned somewhere on our trail system and the connecting trail became known as the Grass Grind.

For a while now Trudi has said promise me John you won't build anymore trails, we have too many to maintain already.

So I have agreed with her, after all we have built 23kms of them however Ken has discovered another bluff and we may just go and have a peek at it sometime soon.