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 Trip Reports 

The 1st-Annual Quads.ca Province-Wide Trail Clean-Up

Various locations around BC

September 23/07

Written by Greg
Lower Mainland photos by Treds and Singleton
Golden photos by Robmag
Peachland photo by Alex

Keith posted: "Well Last year I joined up with Quads.ca just in time to help in a trail clean up. Others around the province seem to think that this is a good idea. The M.O.O.S.E club has done one this year already and it was a great succes from what I hear. I would like to see us do another cleanup of Sylvester and also see about haveing the folks on this site join in all around the province to clean up a trail in there area. I will help organize the one in the lower mainland with the help of others I am sure. This would be a great oppurtunity to show the province that we do care about the state of the back country and our environment. I would think this would be a good get together for club members and non members.

Conky if you could help with the contacts that you have in Mission that would be great. I am not sure if you took care of everything last year or if others helped in the organizing. Please let me know what others did and I will get things started. If anyone else can help drop me a message."

What a great idea! Turn our local trail clean-up into a province-wide effort. So our "1st-Annual Provice-Wide Trail Clean-Up" would actually be the second trail clean-up organized by members of this website.

Scrubbs said the M.O.O.S.E Club in Fort St John was on board. Robmag said the Golden ATV Club was on board. Stacey said the Comox Valley ATV Club was on board. Freedom Rider said that he has a few quads heading to the Skutz Falls area near Duncan for clean-up duties. Alex from Peachland was going to arrange something as well. It wasn't the entire province, but you have to start somewhere.

Lower Mainland

Keith and Conky made some phone calls and arranged bins, dump, and other necessary things.

The weather was great! A bunch of dedicated Quads.ca volunteers showed up, along with a couple 4x4's from BC4x4.com. Also getting their hands dirty were the Mission RCMP, Ministry of Forests, Ministry of Tourism, Sports, and the Arts, and Reliable Towing.

Waste Services provided two huge disposal bins, and District of Mission provided free use of the dump. Catering by M&M Meat Shop was provided by the Ministry of Forests, the Tim Hortons Community Cruiser brought up coffee and Timbits, and Mission Dairy Queen donated ice for the coolers. Paragon Communications provided two-way radios, and VanCity Credit Union in Mission provided us with $200 for expenses (spent on drinks, snacks, signage, hand sanitizer, two small first-aid kits, and soon-to-be-done thank-you cards; thanks to Conky for taking care of all that).

We had a quick orientation and safety meeting at the trailhead, then split up and headed to our locations. We covered the first 7kms of the road. We filled both bins to capacity, and pulled out one stolen car.

There was plenty of entertainment of course! The suspensionless quad trailers didn't spend much time with their tires on the ground. One of the quad trailers dropped a bag on the road and spread its contents; WhiteRockRick picked everything up with his gloved hands and tossed them into his trailer, only to discover the contents were bundled diapers! Treds aka Terds gashed his arm in keeping with his established tradition of clean-up injury. Cst Tim Gregson arrived at a trailside location and looked for his microphone; unfortunately he didn't notice that it had come off his lapel and had gotten wrapped around his rear tire, so that the only thing left at the end of the coily-cord were some bare wires. Reliable's tow truck got the passenger mirror ripped off on an overgrown road, kinking the door skin, bending the window frame, and shattering the window (I'm sure it wasn't funny at the time though).

We had a great lunch break, and swapped stories and poked fun for a bit before heading back out.

We winched up a washing machine from about 200' down the cliff, along with lots of tires/wheels, a couch, and 4 cement buckets. The least the idiots could have done is left them up top for us!

Some hikers and a few residents from the local community thanked us for being there.

After we were done, some went for a quick ride, then headed off to the pub for dinner. Keith, Conky, TheMallett, Highcountry, Roughcountry, and I sat around Conky's trailer for an hour after packing up, and talked about planning for the next clean-up. We tossed around some ideas, and will post about them later on.

1bigdog posted: "That was a great day. Hopefully the wrecker can be fixed with insurance. The last stop up the hill needed a backhoe and dump truck to clean up the area. Good job to all that were there and kudos to Keith, Conky and the rest of the organizers."

Conky posted: "Poor tow truck took his first trail of the day and ripped his mirror off and smashed the window, oh ya and bent the door. Other then, that no injuries today, turned out very good. I will post the weight after I get the numbers."

Conky reported that we had cleaned up 5.38 tons of garbage, not including the metal. The entire event seemed much more organized than last year, and I think everything went smoothly.

Our clean-up got a mention in the "Under My Helmet" blog:

"I read on quads.ca that they're scheduling an annual province wide cleanup day, scheduling it this year for September 23. This annual event could prove to be bigger than some of the dune cleanups the ASA has annually in the ISDRA, because these events are going on simultaneously all across the province.

It's great to see groups of concerned, responsible ATVers getting together like this. It's been my experience that, while ATVers and off roaders are usually blamed for the trash and much of the destruction to public and private land, it is often not the ATVers who are responsible for the problem. So seeing them step up to clean other people's trash is even nicer.

Too bad it probably won't get much media coverage."

We were pretty much continuously working, so there aren't a lot of photos except for when we were relaxing during lunch. Click on a thumbnail to open a larger image in a new window.



Golden

Robmag posted: "Here in Golden, there were only four club members available, but I think we did pretty well. We hit three areas and got four good pickup loads to the landfill. Total weight: 1555kgs or 3412lbs.

Mostly household garbage that had been dumped in the bush, and we cleaned up one campsite.

We are hoping to it again next year, only bigger, so we may be looking for some funding. We didn't spend any money this year, as we got the tipping fees waived by the Columbia-Shuswap Regional District, but we might be looking at a roll-off bin next year."

Way to go; I bet that organ was a heavy beast.


The Golden ATV Club got a mention in the local newspaper.

ATV club cleans up garbage

By Colin Payne - Golden Star - November 07, 2007

Earlier this fall, the Golden ATV club took some time to go out and help make everyone's outdoor experience a little more pleasant.

Four members of the club, including President, Rob Magnusson, went to three places in the Golden area and cleaned up garbage that had been dumped there.

Magnusson says they went to the mine road on the north bench, the OB campground in the Blaeberry, and a road that branches off Kicking Horse Trail, near the first sharp turn.

He notes these three places were sites where they noticed garbage piled up on previous trips.

The Blaeberry campground was relatively clean, he explains, but the other two places were littered with things like household garbage, building materials, old tires, TV sets, and even an old organ.

"Litter really wasn't an issue," Magnusson says. "It was stuff people didn't take to the dump.

"We try to take care of the areas we use a bit, and we don't like to see garbage," he adds.

Using pick up trucks, he notes the four of them carted four loads of garbage out of the two areas over six hours. The total weight of that garbage was 1,555 kg (3,412 pounds), Magnusson says.

"We were all pretty disgusted that four of us could pick up that much garbage in six hours," he says. "I think it's safe to say we've got a problem with people dumping stuff in the bush.

"It was pretty amazing how far people would drive away from the dump to get rid of their garbage."

He notes the total disposal fee for the garbage at the dump would have been around $200, but the Columbia Shuswap Regional District (CSRD) helped them out by waiving the fees for the project. Tirecraft took the old tires off their hands free of charge.

Magnusson points out that the ATV club has done cleanups like this before, but this particular one was part of a first attempt to have a province-wide cleanup day by members of an online ATV forum, www.quads.ca.

He adds that it didn't go province-wide this year, but several clubs around the province did similar cleanup projects.

The turnout from the Golden club was low because the cleanup was done on short notice, and many of them were busy, Magnusson explains.

He notes despite their efforts, there was still more garbage lying there that could have been removed.

But he says they're planning to go back next year and get the rest.

"We're hoping to do it bigger and better on the same weekend next year, and possibly get some other groups involved," he says.

He hopes projects like this can help change some of the existing stereotypes about ATV riders.

"A lot of people think people on ATVs go out and do bad things," he says. "We're trying to change that. When we go out, we try to leave places a bit better than we found them."

Peachland

Alex posted: "We made it a family outing. Not a lot of garbage, but that is a good thing."


Duncan

Freedom Rider posted: "Just to let ya know that 3 of us went out behind Skutz falls and picked up 19 large bags of garbage. Looks great now. After the work we went and played for 2 hours. Sure makes ya feel good to see the before and after pictures."

Thanks to everyone involved for volunteering your time and skills. You put in a tremendous effort; GREAT JOB!

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