 | PMA Future??by (Login bogwalker) |
Joe and I asked ourselves the question on how safe some of these routes will be in a few years time. With no, or very little maintainence, some trails are dissappearing and being overgrown with small trees and shrubs as well as big deadfall and becoming harder and harder to follow.
It is a very attractive idea for many paddlers to access these quiet, seldom visited areas, but we worried that less expereinced travellers could lose the trail and get lost in these areas that see few if any visitors for weeks at a time. The conditions will most likely get worse before they get better with no maintainence at all.
Joe and I discussed what options there were:
1. Leave it alone and just warn any users of the dangers.
2. Close the areas to travellers entirely-but we all know that won't stop people from accessing some of these areas.
3. Have some "minimal maintainance" done to some portages to make them more obvious, but yet still difficult to access to keep the feeling of the area similar to what it is today.
I have now done the Stuart to Nibin Lake portage three times and I can tell you that it is more difficult today then it was a couple of years ago. It will be even more difficult as each year passes. This portage sees more use than the Bibon-Sterling portage or the Sterling Creek portage. These two portages are barely recongnizable in places and hard to find from the lake to access them.
Not only are the portages becoming harder to find but they also are becoming harder to travel through.
In addition the newer maps do not show the portages inside the PMA's any longer so if someone does try to access the area without some basic portage placement and knowledge they could get themselves into dangerous situations if they miss portages that take you around rapids, falls and other obstacles.
This will be a subject for debate for sometime to come. I am not asking for opinion but stating what we felt as we passed through.
I believe in the near future we may hear of injuries and even people getting lost in these areas iof care and education is not taken. I hope that does not occur, but it somehow seems inevitable.
"When a man is part of his canoe, he is part of all that canoes have ever known."
Sigurd F. Olson
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