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The 2nd Annual Quads.ca Province-Wide Trail Clean-UpVarious locations around BCSeptember 20/08 Written by Greg Photos by Greg and Rich Lower Mainland Zone The 2nd-Annual Quads.ca Province-Wide Trail Clean-up had been scheduled for a year, but the actual Lower Mainland zone location wasn't finalized until a couple of weeks before the date. Brian (known as Jessada2007 on Quads.ca) from the Ministry of Forests and Range (MOFR) had suggested Hale Creek, a user-maintained recreation site under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Tourism, Culture, and the Arts (MTCA). After a couple of suggestions, we settled on Hale Creek, and I sent a few reminder emails to those who should know about it. Well, Robert Burns got it right when he wrote about the best-laid plans of mice and men often going awry... As we got close to the clean-up date, I received an email from Brian saying that he was off on injury (herniated disc), and had passed the task on to his supervisor who would assign it to somebody else. The distance was too far for the Tim Hortons Community Cruiser, which had provided coffee and TimBits for us at last year's clean-up. And we had left it too late to get M&M Meat Shops to come out (oops). Hmm, ya gotta feed the volunteers. It was now Wednesday before the clean-up weekend. Tmax suggested that Jeeper (Bruce) might be willing to cook for us. I had heard tales about Bruce's cooking, so I said "Yes, please ask him!" Tmax phoned Bruce, and said "We have a situation." When he explained the problem, Bruce said "There IS no situation!" and generously offered to cook burgers. Cool! Alright, one problem taken care of. On Thursday, I asked Tmax to contact Bruce to see if he could grab some pop as well. Tmax said, "He's already on it." On the Friday afternoon before the event, I got an email from MOFR saying they couldn't attend. I also received a phone call from Conky, who was driving out to the City of Chilliwack Engineering Department to pick up our dump tickets (which would permit the disposal company driver to use the dump for free) saying that our bin company wasn't able to supply a garbage bin, due to a driver scheduling problem or something! Oh great, here we go! MOFR was supposed to be supplying gloves and garbage bags, and how are we supposed to do a clean-up without a garbage bin? Okay, gloves were no big deal, because everyone owns gloves. I figured I might be able to find some heavy-duty garbage bags at Home Depot or somewhere. Since Conky was already out in Chilliwack, he decided to stop by the Chilliwack MOFR office to see if he could get bags and gloves anyways. I was sitting in front of a computer at work and got on to Google to look for another bin company. I found a listing for First Class Waste Services in Chilliwack; Conky phoned them and they agreed to donate a 40-yard bin, to be delivered to the trailhead at 9:15am the next morning. THANKS GUYS! Conky also managed to snag a roll of heavy-duty garbage bags and two cases of bottled water from MOFR, and Reidler from Hi-Q Fabrication in Langley offered up a roll of heavy-duty garbage bags as well. So at 4:30pm on a Friday afternoon, the day before the clean-up, everything was finally in place. *whew* Hey, we work good under pressure. A big THANKS to Conky for taking care of the last-minute behind-the-scenes stuff. Speaking of work, where I work we're in the middle of our "busy season", and I was working the 10:00am - 3:00am shift... yeah, 17 hours... so I got home by 3:45am, got to bed just after 4:00am, and was up at the crack of 6:00am. *yawn* After 3 weeks of working that shift, I was pretty worn out and would have preferred to sleep in rather than head out and clean up somebody else's garbage after 2 hours sleep. But hey, it's for a good cause. Dirtygirl's quad was at her place in Winfield, so she would be riding my Rincon for the day. She arrived at my place shortly after 7:00am as I was loading the quads onto my truck. We then headed for Delta to pick up Rich. After a quick stop at a McDonalds drive-through for breakfast (thanks, Rich!), and another quick stop at a Tim Hortons for coffee (English Toffee for me; thanks Dirtygirl!), we were on the way. It looked like it was going to be a good day weather-wise. When we finally arrived at the Weaver Creek fish hatchery parking lot at the start of the Harrison West FSR where the garbage bin was located, some of the ATVers were hanging out waiting for us. I decided I'd drive the truck right to the Hale Creek site to unload, so I had the quads leave first as I knew I'd be a lot slower. N2Q and his son N2Q2 were following us in N2Q's pickup; they didn't bring the quads today. We caught up to the quads in a switchback; Conky (who is an RCMP officer) had spotted a rolled and wrecked Ranger 4wd over the embankment, and he borrowed N2Q's prybar to rip the VIN tag off of it so he could check it later on. The quads took off again, and N2Q and I followed slowly behind. I spotted a truck and trailer around the 25km mark, and commented that that looked sort of like the access to Hale Creek... but I kept driving... when I reached 20 Mile Bay I decided that I'd actually passed the road in, and hollered for directions on the radio. Treds informed me that yes, the truck and trailer were indeed at the Hale access and that I was about 10kms past where I should have been. Doh! In my defence, I hadn't been up that way since January 2007, and the trees looked a lot different. It turns out the truck and trailer belonged to Stanjake, and when we returned to the Hale access, he was off-loading some full garbage bags into it from his ATV trailer. We set up the yellow "Quads.ca Trail Clean-Up Ahead" signs then proceeded down the Hale access. It's an easy 4wd road, but N2Q (who was leading at this point) had never been 4-wheeling before, and wasn't sure if he could make the first dry creek crossing with his somewhat-new-to-him Ford F-350 Superduty. I said "Move aside and I'll show you how it's done!" and drove on through. This was actually the first time I'd taken MY Superduty on a trail, but I've got years of 4-wheeling experience from my Toyota 4x4 days so it wasn't a big deal for me. We then encountered Road Hog who was heading up the access road in his Dodge 1-ton Dually, to pick up some full garbage bags. Next to pass us heading up were Eric and Crystal from the Valley Trail Riders, followed by Conky, Treds, and some others. We finally got down to the Rec Site, where Tmax, Jeeper, Lone Ranger, Mike Wild, Razon, Cooke15, Beast, their significant others, and possibly more whom I can't remember at the moment were hanging out. Lone Ranger had his quad; everyone else was from BC4x4.com and had come because Tmax had started a thread about the clean-up. The 4-wheelers who had arrived on Friday night had set up a large wall tent complete with a wood-burning stove. Jeeper had set up a huge white canopy under which he had arranged everything he needed to prepare the food, including several tables and multiple barbeques and camp stoves. We were informed that lunch would be served at 2:00pm sharp. 
I handed Rich my camera and asked him to get some photos. Dirtygirl and I unloaded the quads, got our riding gear on, and started off cleaning up the actual rec site itself. We used the Outlander to drag an aluminum canopy out of the bush, along with some assorted pieces of metal. Tmax, Rich, and some of the others started "gathering" firewood from the beach, a process that required several chainsaws, an Explorer, and a Unimog dump box. Once Dirtygirl and I were satisfied with the way the area looked, we started up the access road. Even though everyone had already been up and down it, we still managed to collect a half-bag of drink containers, and some garbage. We encountered MrsN2Q walking down the trail with 2N2Q in a baby stroller she had just bought that day; she was looking for N2Q so I called him on the radio and he and N2Q2 headed up in the truck to grab them. Haha, I've always wanted to put all of their names into a single sentence. When Dirtygirl and I reached the top of the trail, we checked the time; it was 1:30 and lunch was going to be served in 30 minutes. We ran into Eric and Crystal, and Eric suggested we take the less-easy trail back down. It was pretty clean; we picked up a little bit of garbage but collected another half-bag of drink containers, and arrived back at camp just after 2:00pm. 
Back down at camp, Jeeper had the kitchen in full swing. He was cooking up hamburgers and smokies, and was sauteeing onions and mushrooms, and had lettuce, tomatoes, cheddar cheese, and all the condiments laid out, along with a salad and a sausage plate, plus several varieties of chips and an assortment of cold pop. Wow, NICE! While we were eating, Reidler called me on the radio. On Friday he had said he couldn't make it due to a backlog of work at the shop, but he had gotten up early Saturday morning, fabbed up a storm and got everything done, and came out with his son just in time for lunch. Kudos to him for making that effort! 
Bruce informed us that if we were able to stick around for dinner, he'd be cooking up a little seafood dish. I wasn't planning on staying that long, but after his lunch display, well, it didn't take much convincing for me to make THAT decision. So I informed Dirtygirl and Rich that we were staying for dinner. I played fetch and tug with the dogs for a bit, then after lunch we hit the Harrison West FSR. Treds and Conky cleaned the road up to the 40km mark, and also managed to clean a lot of the Mystery Creek road as well. They found three abandoned vehicles, one of which was reported stolen. Eric and Crystal had spotted some debris about 50 feet down a steep embankment, so we headed up to it. It turned out to be the contents of a bag of bad-smelling household-type garbage strewn about; some people are just pigs, and it was all I could do to not throw up while inhaling the stench as we picked it up. Road Hog loaded our full garbage bags into his Dodge, and left to collect more full bags. Others had headed back down the road and were cleaning up the FSR and the side trails. Tmax's Unimog was carting out the aluminum canopy and assorted metal that Dirtygirl and I had dragged out, and also picked up part of a 1940's truck cab and other assorted car parts that had been collected and piled at the side of the road for the trucks to transport to the garbage bin. Mike Wild's Explorer was packed so full of garbage that he couldn't shut the tailgate. Road Hog's Dodge Dually was jammed full of full garbage bags. There were a couple other truck canopies that we broke down and threw into the Unimog enroute to the garbage bin. We stopped at the destroyed motorhome and thought about what we'd have to do to pull it out, but it had been there for so long that trees were growing up all around it and extrication would have taken a whole day just for that, so regrettably we left it alone, but we did drag out some of the debris that was scattered around it. 
On the way down to the garbage bin, the quads leapfrogged down both sides of the road while picking up garbage and drink containers, and the odd pie plate or piece of paper that had fallen out of Mike's Explorer because he couldn't shut the gate. haha By the time we reached the bin, we had cleaned up 40 kms of the Harrison West FSR, the Hale Creek Rec Site, and most of the side trails and small campsites. Those who were at the garbage bin helped empty the trucks. We filled about a third of the bin; it doesn't look like much in the photos but it was a HUGE bin and you can see how small the fibreglass truck canopy and the steel truck cab look inside it. We also had a bag full of recycleable drink containers which I stashed in Tmax's Unimog when he wasn't looking. 
For some, that was the end of the day. We hung out in the lot for a bit, talking about the day, quadding, 4-wheeling, camping, trips, quads, trucks, and other good stuff. Those who had to go did so; the rest of us headed back to camp in the growing darkness. The weather which had been great all day now started to rain, which was fine for eliminating the dust but sucked for me because I had left my waterproof pants back at my truck, thinking that there was no way it was going to rain today. All I had was my waterproof jacket. Dirtygirl and I were on the only two quads heading back to camp; it was 25 kms along a dark FSR in the pouring rain and my sub-standard Outlander headlights. We passed Tmax's Unimog, but never saw the other trucks as they had headed back much earlier than us. I was also bringing back a case of bottled water, strapped on top of my flat-pack jerry can on the front rack, in a cardbox box that I hoped would hold out for the trip. I stood up for most of the ride back, as sitting down on a wet seat while wearing jeans didn't seem like a bright idea. However, I got soaked through to the skin anyways. My Rincon had heated grips and a heated thumbwarmer, which I switched on for Dirtygirl's benefit, but the Outlander had nothing. I was thinking to myself, "Well, this sucks!" as I rode through the downpour. In the middle of the Hale access road, yup, the front of the cardboard case broke and 24 bottles of water went flying. We loaded them into the Rincon's quad trunk and continued on. I was happy to see the lights of camp shining through the trees as we neared the end of the trail. And there were lots of lights! We pulled up to see a crackling bonfire, and Jeeper's kitchen all lit up with hundreds of white icicle lights, and the wall tent was open with the wood-stove keeping everyone warm and toasty. Now THAT was a welcome sight after that uncomfortable ride back to camp. Jeeper's "little seafood dish" turned out to be mussels, shrimp, scallops, and crawfish, plus pork and beans, tenderloin steak marinated in BBQ sauce and whiskey, and salad! OMG!! That was totally above and beyond the call of duty, Bruce! You rock! Now I know that Bruce had help; his girlfriend who's name I didn't catch prepared the pork and beans, and I forgot who told me that he had been marinating the steak all day. There was so much food that Jeeper also fed the church youth group that was camping on the other side of the trees. One of the group asked him, "Are you guys gonna be here next year?" lol 
We spent a while alternating between the kitchen, the fire, and the wall tent, and I was pretty much dry after nearly burning myself as my jeans warmed up from the heat of the fire. But all good things have to come to an end, and Rich, Dirtygirl, and I had to leave for home. Not that we wanted to leave such a great time and great company. We loaded up the quads and our gear by the light of the truck's marker lights, and somehow when I was climbing up onto the deck to retrieve a pair of gloves from the Outlander I slipped on a wet aluminum tie-down rail and fell to the ground, and on the way down my left shin struck the rail and I was in pain for a few minutes. That'll leave a mark. I was pretty sure it was bleeding too. Just as we were finished loading, Rich wandered over with a bright flashlight and Mike showed up with his Explorer, to provide us light from his headlights. Well, that's timing! Oh well. We followed them back to camp to say our goodbyes, and Mike drove behind us back to the truck so we could see where we were going. Thanks, Mike! As I mentioned earlier, I wasn't planning on staying this late, so I didn't have any of the 10 flashlights I own with me, but I guess I should toss one in the truck and one in each quad "just in case". We finally headed up the Hale access road; I was in 4-low and it took about 40 minutes to get to the top. We collected the yellow "Quads.ca Trail Clean-Up Ahead" signs and we were finally on the way. Much to our frustration, we noticed several beer cans and some garbage on the Harrison West FSR that we KNOW weren't there earlier. Doesn't take long for the idiots to leave their mark. We made a stop at a Tim Hortons in Mission for coffee and cookies (thanks Dirtygirl!). I checked out my shin which still hurt; it was still bleeding and blood was dripping down my leg and getting soaked up by my sock. My shin did stop bleeding by the time I got home, and today (Monday) there's a 3x6" swollen bruise surrounding the gash. I think that was the only injury of the weekend. I got home around 2:00am; it was a really long day after a really short sleep, but I had a lot of fun and would do it again in a heartbeat. Sorry I didn't get a lot of photos of people actually cleaning up; Rich had my camera at camp for the first half of the clean-up, and we were spread out around the trails for the most part, and when we were busy working, it didn't occur to me to take a photo. Thanks to everyone who took the time to come out. You did a FANTASTIC JOB, and your support of Quads.ca is greatly appreciated. Greg Treds sent me this additional info: After everyone else had split, Conky and I were yakking in the parking lot for another half-hour, then called it a day. It was just beginning to get dark as we left the Weaver Creek parking lot. I left the parking area to drive home to Langley. Driving from the clean-up toward the Mission Bridge I found Eric and Crystal (who had left the parking lot about an hour earlier to attend a company function of Crystal's) on the side of the road. Eric was directing traffic around an accident from the east side, and Crystal was directing it from the west, while the police and tow truck operator were dealing with the vehicle in the ditch. I stopped clear of the accident site and offered my reflective vest to Eric (it was now starting to get very dark) as Crystal was wearing the policeman's vest, and I also gave Crystal my flashlight. Asking Eric as to what had taken place, it seems that shortly after entering onto the highway by the Sasquatch Inn, this car passed him on a blind corner with double-solid lines, then proceed to do it again with the vehicle in front of Eric. They decided it was time to call 9-1-1 and report a drunk and erratic driver. Fifteen kilometers up the road the moron in the car clipped a pick-up truck and careened into the oncoming traffic and continued over into the south-side ditch, narrowly missing a pole with a cross on it from a previous accident's victim. Our Good Samaritan ATVers pulled up to the accident prior to the police arriving on the scene and managed to get the drunk driver out of the vehicle in the ditch. Shortly after, two RCMP vehicles arrived on the scene; one arrested the drunk driver, handcuffed him, and took him off to be tested, leaving one police car on the scene with no one to assist with the traffic on the highway. Shortly after that the tow truck operators arrived on scene. This is how our fellow ATVers came to be the traffic-control people for the officer and recovery vehicles on the scene that I'd come across. A long day on the clean-up, then traffic control for what could have been a very ugly situation. A huge thanks to two outstanding ATVers for their stellar efforts on and at the Quads.ca clean-up day. Treds • Trail Clean-Up discussion forum The Quads.ca Lower Mainland Zone team would like to acknowlege and thank the following entities for their contributions to our 2008 clean-up:• BC Ministry of Forests and Range, Chilliwack Forest District • BC4x4.com • City of Chilliwack Engineering Department • First Class Waste Services • Hi-Q Fabrication • Valley Trail Riders ATV Club Hopefully I didn't forget anyone. This clean-up was taking place around the Province, with work being done by supporting ATV clubs and concerned individuals.• Golden ATV Club Clean-Up written by Robmag • Greater Kamloops ATV Association / Salmon Arm Nature's Nomads Clean-Up written by Twiggy If anyone else did a write-up, please let me know and I'll add a link to it. |
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