In this elec­tronic age, cam­eras have been replaced by tiny phones with even tinier cam­eras. What would Alexan­der Bell think of that? He prob­a­bly would have said, “a thou­sand words is better than a pic­ture.” Ergo, there are no pic­tures of the fan­tas­tic Trail Day crew hard at work. Instead, you’ll have to settle for this long winded report. [The short winded report by Craig reads: “We came. We ham­mered nails. We ate muffins.”]

For the first time in many years, we weren’t work­ing on the Baden Powell Trail. Instead, Dis­trict pri­or­ity dic­tated that more board­walk was needed on a sec­tion of the Sea to Sky trail. So our work­site was on the north side of Inter River Park, before Lynn Canyon. But we’re get­ting slightly ahead of ourselves.

A large con­tin­gent of Knee Knacker run­ners and friends met on Sat­ur­day morn­ing. It was another glo­ri­ous day in Vancouver’s unusu­ally dry spring, con­tin­u­ing a Knee Knacker tra­di­tion of per­fect work­ing con­di­tions for Trail Day. Craig greeted every­one with muffins and coffee, gen­er­ously donated by Delany’s. Look­ing at the group of excited run­ners, we noticed new Trail Day inductees and var­i­ous old hands. Like John Machray and his trusty chain­saw. (Although Graham Knell, North Van Dis­trict Trail & Habi­tat Co-ordinator, hadn’t requested a chain­saw for the day, John was fol­low­ing the guy creed rule #15: if you have gear, you must bring it.) We left the cars at 9am to meet Graham, just down the road. In suit­able fash­ion, the head of the pack promptly led us into a dead-end. Where’s trail tape when you need it?

We made a short u-turn and found Graham at his truck. After offi­cially sign­ing in, the group (28 strong) quickly car­ried all the mate­ri­als and tools from the truck to the work­site. The coffee and muffins were also moved. Espe­cially the coffee. It’s a west coast thing.

At the work­site, we divided into three teams: board­walk con­truc­tion­ists (who wielded ham­mers, nails, and a can-do atti­tude), rock hunter-gatherers (who hunted and gath­ered rocks for the con­struc­tion­ists), and slope reshapers (who wan­dered ahead to fix slopes and rid the world of unsightly foot­paths). While the con­struc­tion­ists set about build­ing the board­walk (con­nect piece “A” to piece “B”…) I joined the rock hounds in strip­ping the sur­round­ing forest of all vis­i­ble rocks. Oh, how quickly that motto “take only pic­tures, leave only foot­prints” takes a beat­ing when a trail party gets busy dig­ging holes, moving earth, and gen­er­ally tromp­ing around the forest!

After an hour of leav­ing no stone unturned, some of us went to help the last team who were work­ing on a switch­back a few min­utes away. Once there, we gath­ered rocks again but this time, we were more selec­tive in the sizing. Specif­i­cally, we needed rocks that were grape­fruit sized. Or soft­ball sized. Or exactly 30mm in diam­e­ter. One can never be too fussy. Instead of fill­ing a crib to hold up a board­walk, we needed these rocks to form the trail bed that we would cover with dirt.

(A quick lesson on get­ting good dirt for trail work. You’ll need three shov­els, two buck­ets, and one pick. And people to wield those tools. Now find a spot just off to the side of the trail. Start dig­ging. Don’t worry about the hole you’re making in Mother Nature’s back­yard. She’ll recover. The worse that can happen is she’ll drop a tree on you in retal­i­a­tion. Once you get past the thin, top layer of organic mate­r­ial, you’ll hit the “pay­dirt”: a deep, inor­ganic layer of dull orange-reddish brown, min­eral like dirt. It’s lousy for grow­ing things, but per­fect for cov­er­ing trails.)

While we filled in the eroded parts of the trail to pro­tect the tree roots (and pre­vent trip­ping), more steps were added into the switch­back. All this hap­pened with light­ning speed. It was such an eager crew that they would have built little stone­henge mounds of pinecones, if I’d told them that was the new North Van Parks require­ment. As a fin­ish­ing touch, stonework was placed along the trail’s edges to form an attrac­tive bound­ary. Hey, aes­thet­ics count in trail work!

We went back to rejoin the main group, and like a mush­room sprout­ing overnight on your lawn, a board­walk sud­denly appeared out of nowhere. The lack of engi­neer­ing plans clearly hadn’t deterred the con­struc­tion­sts. We gath­ered around and munched the last of the muffins, wait­ing for the last spike to be driven in the final step. Applause and high-fives broke out with the last “thwack!” into the cedar plank.

The final sum­mary? Upper body work­out on Saturday’s trail day. Lower body on Sunday’s train­ing run. And pride in a job well done.

Andrew Wong
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