Temporary, I hope, directional signs signs on Moose Creek Loop have been there for two or three years.
There has been little observable maintenance over the last few years. Only one trail has seen a substantial amount of improvement; Moose Creek Loop in the Sibbald Area which has several new bridges and two sets of steps. But, temporary handwritten signs were nailed to trees and have now been there for two or three years.
Friends volunteers have re-routed this section of Diamond T and eliminated braiding from the bottom of the cutline to the bridge over Willow Creek.
While Friends of Kananaskis Country has worked on a few trails this past summer, repairs and maintenance by Public Lands in Kananaskis Country appears to have stalled. I am told this a because they don’t have enough staff, and those they do have are overworked.
If this is so, why are they overworked? The root of the problem is lack of leadership from above, the imposition of unnecessary tasks, poor co-ordination between Parks and Public Lands, too many layers of administration, endless meetings, and the reluctance of the government to empower the people actually doing the work to make decisions.
While there appears to be lots of planning going on, nothing ever seems to get done. No one seems to be making decisions that result in improving the trail users experience. Why is someone not walking the trails and planning the replacement of the abysmal signage currently in place on Public Lands trails.
A sign this old doesn’t need nails or screws.
There are lots of old navigation-style signs like this one that are not only unreadable, but cover too large an area.
How about using some of our Conservation Pass fees to assign a planner (Yes, this is a job for a planner) to concentrate on trail signage instead of spending all the money on infrastructure. Why, as owner of an International competitive venue, did the Government not set aside funds for the inevitable upgrades to the Nordic Centre instead of using Conservation Pass fees? Give me a break!
Those of us who hike in K Country are no longer users. We are now paying customers and should have some input on how the money is spent. On a trip into the Ghost this summer we observed a new trailhead kiosk near the start of the Black Rock trail with nothing on it. OK, the old one was destroyed in the fire, but was its replacement really at the top of someones priority list when there are many much higher use trails in the foothills of K Country that badly need repairs and maintenance.
To misquote someone else, it appears that under the present Minister, AEP “is a vast bureaucratic blackhole where hope disappears into a bottomless pit of inertia”.
