WORKSHOP - Alpine Recreational Stategic Plan - Mt. Fromme

[Sharon]

Alpine Recreational Strategic Plan Workshop
A Directors Workshop is scheduled for Tuesday June 21, 2005 at 7 p.m. in the Committee Room at the District Hall, 355 West Queens Road, North Vancouver, B.C.

It is unclear if the public is invited to speak.

This would be a good opportunity to see how council directs staff on where to go next.

[Tom]

The public is definitely invited to attend though?

[derwood]

http://www.dnv.org/article.asp?a=2933&c=75

[Big Dipper]

Those in attendance will be the all of Council, the Director of Planning ( Irwin Torry), James Ridge (CAO), project staff team, a rep from GVRD and Grouse Mtn. The purpose of the workshop is to allow Council to have informal discussion with staff on some of the preliminary recommendations that were developed last year, in consultation with the public. Staff did make a presentation in January, but at that time, Council did not provide any direction and requested this workshop.

No decisions will be made at the workshop; decisions can only be made at Regular Council, but hopefully there will be an opportunity to get a sense of where they stand on the recreation issues. The public can attend, but at Directors Workshops, in general the public is not invited to speak as in regular Council.

[Big Dipper]

**Please note: Venue is changed to District Operations Centre at 1370 Crown Street North Vancouver B.C. **

Director's Workshop is scheduled for Tuesday, June 21, 2005 at 7:00 p.m. in the Committee Room at the District Hall, 355 West Queens Road, North Vancouver, B.C.

This workshop is an opportunity for Council and staff to further discuss some of the details of Alpine Recreational Strategic Study in an informal setting, before a final report is prepared. As such, no decisions will be made regarding implementation of the Study. The workshop is open to the public, but the format does not include a public input component.

[TheGiggler]

this is a numbers game... the more people out to support MTB, the more the powers that be will listen to us.

don't think the anti-mtb folks are going to sit back and wait... they will be there in numbers with a plan to get us kicked off fromme or at the least make us lose some of our trails.

maybe the chance of it happenning are slim ... but is it worth taking the risk?

i know for a fact the DNV has considered closing some fromme trails. how would you guys feel if they wanted to close (say) Ladies cause Pipeline and Espresso are right there as well, but in better condition... this is the kind of thing that we need to be on guard for.

[Bean]

I'm planning to be there.

The sense I get from council, with the one obvious exception, is that most are at least supportive of the idea of mountain biking and realise it is a benefit to the community but they are getting flak from the residents in the areas most effected by the mountain biking related traffic and who though they had moved to the middle of no where only to discover they were in the centre of the mountain biking universe.

IMHO, if they made a minor investment in Fromme along the lines of what has been invested in the two tennis courts at Princess Park (a parking lot, change facilities, and washrooms) it would reduce the negative effect on the residents in the immediate area.

[TheGiggler]

IMHO, if they made a minor investment in Fromme along the lines of what has been invested in the two tennis courts at Princess Park (a parking lot, change facilities, and washrooms) it would reduce the negative effect on the residents in the immediate area.


most people agree with that. it seems the problem is that when the $ figures for these upgrades came in, lots of the residents were balking at the price. funny how they won't settle for anything less than us paying our own way, when like you point out, tennis players, skateboards, etc, have their facilities subsidised.

if we had tons of NV residents out to show that the overall NVD wants the lots, then maybe the elected officials would listen a little closer to us...

[Knnn]

**Please note: Venue is changed to District Operations Centre at 1370 Crown Street North Vancouver B.C. **

Director's Workshop is scheduled for Tuesday, June 21, 2005 at 7:00 p.m. in the Committee Room at the District Hall, 355 West Queens Road, North Vancouver, B.C.



I'm confused, I know it's easily done, but is the workshop definately on at 1370 Crown Street rather than 335 West Queens?

Ta.

[TheGiggler]

I'm confused, I know it's easily done, but is the workshop definately on at 1370 Crown Street rather than 335 West Queens?

Ta.


I'd assume so after checking out the link derwood included above -- http://www.dnv.org/article.asp?a=2933&c=75

Alpine Recreational Strategic Plan Workshop

**Please note: Venue is changed to District Operations Centre at 1370 Crown Street North Vancouver B.C. Time remains unchanged.

A Directors Workshop is scheduled for Tuesday June 21, 2005 at 7 p.m. in the Committee Room at the Municipal Hall, 355 West Queens Road, North Vancouver, B.C.
This workshop is an opportunity for Council and staff to further discuss some of the details of Alpine Recreational Strategic Study in an informal setting, before a final report is prepared. As such, no decisions will be made regarding implementation of the Study. The workshop is open to the public, but the format does not include a public input component.

[Knnn]

An interesting night.

It was very clearly stated, a number of times, the district is not interested in entertaining any form of ban of mountain biking on Fromme. Cool.

Councilor Crist is definitely in the minority and there appears to be a significant degree of frustration with respect to his views on the need to 'protect' Fromme from mountain biking. He also expressed concern that Fromme was the only place large numbers of bikers come to ride on the north shore and that "Stunt Biking" caused the most damage. Councilor Walton put him straight on both counts, that Stunt bikers were a minority and that Seymour gets far more riders and ride time than Fromme because of ease of access.

Councilors Nixon and Walton, appear to be very supportive of a self-sustaining mountain biking community. They also raised the interesting concept that the District should possibly consider the North Shore Alpine Area as a recreation center that should receive similar funding and maintenance as other more conventional recreation centers. That was my understanding anyway.

There was some discussion of a number of revenue generating methods to support sustainable management of the trail system. One that was briefly discussed was a user fee for mountain biking. Although Walton was concerned that this section of the community already contributes more than any other to maintaining sustainable use of the trail system and he did not want to see a user fee system compromise or sour this system.
I for one would be willing to pay a user fee ($25-50), as long as I knew all my money was going into trail maintenance.

A big wig from Grouse indicated that there were no plans in the near future with respect to opening up Grouse to Mountain biking or allowing their existing lift system to accommodate mountain bikes. However, he did slip in the caveat that this could be re-assessed in a number of years.

There appears to be a clear consensus that some trails will be closed in biological and environmental sensitive areas. No indications yet as to where and which trails. One interesting feature of the management plan was active trail management, so that some trails could be closed for certain periods to protect certain sensitive ecological receptors, be it bears or at risk species. Similarly trails could be closed if extremely wet. Trail management may also include input and a level of self-regulation from volunteer trail custodians similar to ski patrol (i.e. similar to CBC earlier this year).

Anyhow much food for thought and I believe the overwhelming majority of the council understand and appreciate the benefits of promoting mountain biking and that it can be a sustainable use of the recreational area. They certainly all recognize the incredible community involvement that has been fostered and developed through the NSMBA over the past few years.

Sorry for babbling ... but I'm excited …. I thought the meeting indicated a fairly rosy future for mountain biking on the shore.

[Bean]

Well... just got back from the meeting. There was no opportunity for public involvement, but various stakeholders were represented and the discussion was interesting.

The key points I got from the meeting:



Christ has well and truly isolated himself, we needn't waste our energies debunking his diatribes, accusations, etc. as no one else on council is listening to him.
Although it has yet to be voted on, council and staff appear to be working on the assumption that the NVD will be taking on an active role in the management of the alpine and multiple uses, including mountain biking, will be permitted on Fromme. Alternatives are considered unworkable and are not being entertained.
There will be future debate on how to balance environmental and recreational needs/goals, the word stewardship was brought up many times.
Some trails will be closed. Although no trails were mentioned specifically we can expect that at least some trails will be closed in the near future due to environmental concerns. The overall number of trails on Fromme can be expected to go down.
The concensus amoung councilors seems to be to treat Fromme and the alpine in general as an extension to the current recreation commission infrastructure (aka like a Rec Centre)
Mountain bikers were singled out on several occassions as being the key (only?) user group that is actually actively maintaining the trail network
Council is very aware of the economic benefits brought by mountain biking and the recreational use of the alpine in general
There was very little talk with regard to specifics about dealing with traffic and parking issues at trail heads. The current resident only parking at the top of Mtn Hwy will continue for the time being, parking and shuttle services continue to be looked at.
Councillor Nixon brought up the idea of a mountain bike license or environmental levy as a way to fund trail maintenance, but this did not seem to get much support. Getting users involved in volunteering to maintain the trails was preferred.
There are concerns about the District's ability to take on the responsibility for a rec. area that is used by the entire region (60% of all users are from outside the District) and were discussing the potential for more regional involvement and the GVRD's potential involvement.
Several councillors (Walton & Nixon IIRC) talked of the evolution of the mountain biking community and the improvement in the trail maintenance
Grouse has no plans for lift access mountain biking at this time.
Well, that's about all I got in my notes.

The trail closures are disappointing, but not entirely surprising. Of course how big an issue it becomes will depend on what trails are closed. From the discussion I didn't get a sense of which trails they were most concerned about, but I expect we will find out soon enough. That's when the real fun is likely to begin.

[Knnn]

The trail closures are disappointing, but not entirely surprising. Of course how big an issue it becomes will depend on what trails are closed. From the discussion I didn't get a sense of which trails they were most concerned about, but I expect we will find out soon enough. That's when the real fun is likely to begin.

Hopefully, it may be possible to limit and/or negotiate trail closure by demonstrating that potential damage can be readily mitigated with appropriate control measures, such as bridging riparian zones or marshland, providing proper drainage or even rerouting sections or trails around sensitive areas. The excellent working relationship the NSMBA has with district staff should go a long way to facilitating this type of process.

[Bean]

Hopefully, it may be possible to limit and/or negotiate trail closure by demonstrating that potential damage can be readily mitigated with appropriate control measures, such as bridging riparian zones or marshland, providing proper drainage or even rerouting sections or trails around sensitive areas.

Hopefully that's the case, though I got the sense from James Ridge (DNV staff) that there were some trails that they had already made up their minds about closing. In other cases rerouting was mentioned.

The devil will be in the details, but overall I'm hopefull.

- Ben

[TheGiggler]

The trail closures is the one area I simply can not fathom. That is, beyond the trails which are in fact in the Mosquito creek watershed/old growth area, as it is a salmon bearing stream.

They have always discussed closing trails. In the past they wanted to close a certain trail between the 6th and 7th switches.

All this will do is increase the ridership on those that remain, thus increasing the erosion and damage. Part of the reason fromme is in relatively good shape is that it has so many different ways down, versus somewhere like Seymour where there's only a few main trails down.

Lastly, other than Mosquito creek area, the district's own environmental assement showed that there are NO mountain bike trails on extremely sensitive areas. All trails outside Mosquito creek fell in their "recreation" allowed areas which included riding. With proper construction and possibly some reroutes it's absurd if they do not allow our exisiting trails to get up to standard.

This just shows that while mountain bike on fromme may be somewhat safe, if we don't keep the pressure on, we could be down to a handful of wide gravel paths at the worst case ...