McLean Creek Public Land Use Zone is the most popular destination in the region for Calgary/Cochrane powersports enthusiasts. From May to October, thousands of off-roaders take advantage of the area’s offroad motorcycle, all-terrain vehicle and truck trails.
But who looks after the well-used dirt paths and roads?
In the offroad-motorcycle (ORM) segment, Calgary/Cochrane-based Rocky Mountain Dirt Riders (RMDRA) spends thousands of dollars in club funds and volunteer hours annually; establishing, mapping and maintaining single-track trails at McLean. On June 19, the 200-member club took it to another level, hiring LR Helicopters of Springbank to drop pre-fabricated trail infrastructure at gps-located sites in the park where club members installed the wood-steel bridges and muskeg matting. Club members had pre-built the items and trucked them to the Allen Bill staging area where a Bell 206 Jet Ranger piloted by Mark James plucked the items in nets before depositing them in the bush for installation.
The costly ($1,500/hr for half-day helicopter time), labour-intensive endeavor is the ORM user group’s way of ensuring continued public access to a well-maintained trail network for responsible riders at the park located 45 kilometres southwest of Cochrane.
“We have infrastructure the club has built, muskeg mats and bridges mainly,” said RMDRA trail maintenance director Tim Bruce, observing the heli-loading operation alongside LR Helicopters’ loadmaster James Haight of Cochrane at the Allen Bill staging area. “We’ve tried alternate ways to get them out to the single-track trails in the past and it’s proven unsuccessful. And we’ve not had the budget to do anything bigger than how we’ve done it previously with quads or trailers.
“This year we have casino grant money that came in, and we’re putting the dollars to use by renting a helicopter to take this stuff to the trails that normally we can’t get these items to.”
An eight-foot long, three-foot wide section of wooden musket matting, placed on environmentally-sensitive trail sections to prevent erosion, weighs 120 pounds. Dozens are placed throughout the park in hard-to-reach places. Hauling them, and larger pre-fabricated wood and steel bridges, in by hand or trailed behind an ATV isn’t as efficient as delivering them by helicopter, which can deliver as many as five matting sections per load to difficult locations.
McLean Creek’s single-track ORM trails are located up rocky slopes, ridges and seismic lines specifically to avoid low-lying wet areas. The few wetland paths, where the infrastructure is being installed, are there only to link one ridge to the next.
Mitigating any ORM exposure and erosion in these wet areas is the key.
“The trail network needs it,” Bruce said. “It’s all about experience. Nobody else is out here doing this. We don’t want these areas to close.
“It’s about responsibility. We use it. We want to maintain it. All the infrastructure we’ve built has been approved by ESRD (Alberta Environment and Sustainable Resource Development).”
