Burnaby Mountain 2015

Large tree across the left hand trail through Nahenoo.

Gear jammer's wet but running well.

I saw a cougar.

I saw a cougar.

Where?

Where?

Cougars aren't interested in dudes who are in arrears, only those who have tasty meat, eh?

Lots of little washouts and gullies on the trails after the heavy rains.

• Lower Gear Jammer has a small canyon running down the middle with extra loose cobbles.
• Uppercut has a bit of surprise washout too.

Trails will be in need of a little extra love from the trail fairies to patch them up.

But overall trails are in pretty good shape-just mind the horse droppings on the Trans Canada.

…

The Issue and Resolution:

The failures that started occurring last January and are now being mitigated, were the result of a major "blow off" or "overflow" through a culvert connected to the first pond. A contractor working on civil works in the ring road was constructing a new stormwater line/bypass in the ring road. In order to do so, they needed to stop flows into the first upstream pond (the one who's design outfall goes near GJ). This outfall, as noted, is designed for a very prescribed "pre-development" volume of water. However, the contractor "plugged" the pond outlet below this outfall point in order to do their works during a dry period. Once done, the contractor failed to remove the lower plug. A major storm event in January, 2014 occurred and pushed all the upstream stormwater out the culvert, creating the drainage issues and channels we have today. The source of this failure was not immediately identified by the contractor and was found by the reviewing engineer, so a couple of additional blow-offs occurred.

Once the plug was removed and water flows were restored to normal, it was noticed that the excessive flow had essentially expedited the erosion/channelization of water ways that predominantly headed toward upper and middle GJ. So, even with "normal" flows now coming out the outfalls, rather than dispersing through the watershed, much of the water was finding this channel toward GJ.

The contractor hired Jay Hoots, with agreement of the City, to "fix" the trail in October. Jay did the work in 2 or 3 days and returned the trail to good condition. But the contractor failed to address the problem at the source, by remediating the area below the outfall. Immediately following Jay's trail work, an intense 3 day storm continually fed water back toward GJ, causing all of Jay's work to be literally flushed down the drain.

Following this, the City and UniverCity basically stopped trying to get further work from the contractor and are collectively addressing the issue from the outfall through the trail. Since the bulk of the work on the outfall and Upper and Middle GJ was completed just over 1 week ago, one typical storm cycle has passed through. Water flows are measured back to normal. 80% of the trail work is supporting the water flows at this time. A few additional drainage issues are now marked (flagged) and will be dealt with over the next week. This should leave GJ as it was prior to last January.

There will always be wet spots. GJ has a history of wet spots and below-surface ground water. But it will be of the level that can be managed via regular maintenance as with any trail.

Fingers crossed for this final round of remediation.

Hoping Dale can provide an update on the repair work on GJ and if it is still ongoing.

It doesn't look like the recent repairs and drainage work performed are holding up? GJ definitely hasn't been remediated to its condition prior to the damage that took place?

The storm this weekend was crazy. Re-work of re-work on GJ needs to be done and is being assessed. I believe it's a water volume and flow rate solution first and foremost. The trail work done was high quality, but just couldn't handle the rate and quantity of flow over about a 2.5 hour period. 83mm of rain landed on Friday alone at flow rates higher than we've seen for a long while. Nuts.

Many other Burnaby trails thrashed by the storm as well. Pandora's is a permanent creek now with a huge rut all the way up the middle - this is an uphill only (for bikes) trail, but is now pretty much unpleasant on foot or bike. Upper Nicole's is also a riverway when wet and getting worse with no real maintenance occurring.

With more and more massive rain events in our future - ?the new norm? - trail drainage needs to be reconsidered from conventional means (or fortified) - GJ for example has always had drainage issues, but these events are only making it progressively worse. All trails will need the work of Burnaby and the trail community working together to establish the resources to re-adjust the trails accordingly and won't happen overnight. A new relationship and new outlook from all parties needs to be taken to find the best and most sustainable path forward. The biking community is most active, but these trail conditions are not the result of bike use, they are the result of extreme weather events and water and its management during those events.

Our immediate concern is solving GJ, but hopefully we can help coalesce a legitimate discussion on ongoing trail maintenance on Burnaby Mtn. given the ongoing propensity for large and damaging single-storm events. Burnaby can't do this on their own (without significant funding streams and labour hours allocated to the trails), but there needs to be a shared understanding of how to move forward as a pro-active community.

83mm of rain on Burnaby Mountain on Friday. Crazy.

the work on GJ was top notch and am quite surprised it didn't handle the storm. Was there much damage?

Did a night ride on Burnaby mountain yesterday and was surprised that the trails we rode were in decent shape considering the recent torrential rains.

Typical loop:

• North Road
• Dead Moped
• Trans Canada
• Naheeno Park
• Mel's
• Nicoles'
• Pipeline

Thanks to all those involved in keeping the Burnaby Mountain trails in decent shape.

…

Thanks Dale, glad to hear work is ongoing.

It is really unfortunate that the City Of Burnaby is borderline impossible to work with as a volunteer. The thousands of hours of free man power and experience they have declined and/or alienated over the last decade would have maybe made//could make a difference.

Thanks Dale, glad to hear work is ongoing.

It is really unfortunate that the City Of Burnaby is borderline impossible to work with as a volunteer. The thousands of hours of free man power and experience they have declined and/or alienated over the last decade would have maybe made//could make a difference.

i had an interesting conversation with someone over at the COB last year regarding trail work and let's just say that it's not the city that's turning down the free labour and experience. there are other forces at play that are stinking this up for the people that ride sfu.

i had an interesting conversation with someone over at the COB last year regarding trail work and let's just say that it's not the city that's turning down the free labour and experience. there are other forces at play that are stinking this up for the people that ride sfu.

Sorry Mark, you are wrong.

Without exception the #1 barrier to entry for volunteer trail work on BBY MTN is the COB. If you know anyone with any pull at the COB who thinks otherwise I'd encourage you to get them to contact the BMBA.

Even the union guys are happy to have volunteers out working on the trails. I've been out digging with enough of them that I feel more than experienced enough to make that claim.

Sorry Mark, you are wrong.

Without exception the #1 barrier to entry for volunteer trail work on BBY MTN is the COB. If you know anyone with any pull at the COB who thinks otherwise I'd encourage you to get them to contact the BMBA.

Even the union guys are happy to have volunteers out working on the trails. I've been out digging with enough of them that I feel more than experienced enough to make that claim.

that's entirely possible as i don't know if i was given the entire or truthful story. i spent over an hour on the phone with a senior staffer in charge of trail maintenance. i made it clear i was a resident and unhappy that planned trail days were being cancelled and wanted to find out why. i also pressed on other issued regarding the type of maintenance that's been done and if that's going to change. when it comes to trail maintenance i was given some clear answers to my questions and some grudging confirmations on my suspicions as to what the problems were. while union guys may be happy to volunteer it seems the union itself is not so joyfull to have volunteers working on the trails. the trail days need to have paid city workers there and this is the reason trail days got cancelled last year - they didn't have staff available to attend.

i would really like to know what the truth is here so pressure can be put on the right people to effect change and improve things on bby mtn. it's a shame that there are a significant number of people who want to do work on bby mtn but can't due to red tape.