This has been posted in the Revelstoke Conditions Thread for a week now with 24 respondents so for but I figured it might get a little more traffic if I posted it here. The following is an excerpt from an email sent to Revelstoke Snowmobile Club members recently:
Recently an open house was held by Stella-Jones, a logging company in Revelstoke regarding the deactivation of logging roads, some of which include snowmobile trails. Stella-Jones, being the last cutting permit holder of these roads in under the obligation of liability for the roads. This means they are responsible for the upkeep, maintaining or replacement of bridges, culverts and repairs to the roads. This can run into very large sums of money over years when no logging is taking place on these roads. If the roads are deactivated that responsibility is no longer theirs.
Deactivation of roads can mean many things, the roads can be put back to ‘natural slope’, bridges pulled, culverts dug up or large berms and ditches built to restrict access. While many feel that deactivation of snowmobile roads would not pose a problem, the deactivation in which pulling the road back to natural slope would in effect eliminate the road. Other forms of deactivation would restrict the club from maintaining these roads/trails during the summer months, brushing, checking for plugged culverts which could wipe out a section of the road.
If the roads were to be put under the Ministry of Forests ownership this would eliminate the need for deactivation. Stella-Jones does not want to deactivate these roads but cannot afford to maintain them when no revenue is coming from them. To that end a comment form (attached) has been made available to the public for comments stating what the public users would like to see happen. The club has approached the Ministry of Forests with concern over two of the roads scheduled to be deactivated. Veideman and Bezanson trails on Boulder fall under the ‘ownership’ of Stella-Jones. The club has urged MoF (Ministry of Forests) to take over these roads and put them under MoF status. This means the MoF would then be responsible for the maintaining of these roads and our trails would be saved. In talks with MoF it looks as if this will happen but to make sure we are urging our members to fill out a comment form with their concerns, return them to us and we in turn will make sure Stella-Jones gets them to forward to MoF. We ask that comments be polite yet stress your concerns over the possible loss of two of the three snowmobile trails on Boulder. One roads that was set to be deactivated was the road to McCrae, MoF has stepped in and taken over that road, so access to that popular areas is secured, we just need to get the others under that protection.
There are many other types of users on these roads in the summer and we feel that will encourage MoF to consider the request to resume ownership of the road system on Boulder but it never hurts to have a lot of comments that can be forwarded on.
An online survey has been started to allow people an easy forum to voice their concerns over the potential closures. I have added a link to it below. Please take the 2 minutes (it literately is only two minutes) to answer this short 5 question survey and one of them is your name!!!
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/2GCKH8G
Recently an open house was held by Stella-Jones, a logging company in Revelstoke regarding the deactivation of logging roads, some of which include snowmobile trails. Stella-Jones, being the last cutting permit holder of these roads in under the obligation of liability for the roads. This means they are responsible for the upkeep, maintaining or replacement of bridges, culverts and repairs to the roads. This can run into very large sums of money over years when no logging is taking place on these roads. If the roads are deactivated that responsibility is no longer theirs.
Deactivation of roads can mean many things, the roads can be put back to ‘natural slope’, bridges pulled, culverts dug up or large berms and ditches built to restrict access. While many feel that deactivation of snowmobile roads would not pose a problem, the deactivation in which pulling the road back to natural slope would in effect eliminate the road. Other forms of deactivation would restrict the club from maintaining these roads/trails during the summer months, brushing, checking for plugged culverts which could wipe out a section of the road.
If the roads were to be put under the Ministry of Forests ownership this would eliminate the need for deactivation. Stella-Jones does not want to deactivate these roads but cannot afford to maintain them when no revenue is coming from them. To that end a comment form (attached) has been made available to the public for comments stating what the public users would like to see happen. The club has approached the Ministry of Forests with concern over two of the roads scheduled to be deactivated. Veideman and Bezanson trails on Boulder fall under the ‘ownership’ of Stella-Jones. The club has urged MoF (Ministry of Forests) to take over these roads and put them under MoF status. This means the MoF would then be responsible for the maintaining of these roads and our trails would be saved. In talks with MoF it looks as if this will happen but to make sure we are urging our members to fill out a comment form with their concerns, return them to us and we in turn will make sure Stella-Jones gets them to forward to MoF. We ask that comments be polite yet stress your concerns over the possible loss of two of the three snowmobile trails on Boulder. One roads that was set to be deactivated was the road to McCrae, MoF has stepped in and taken over that road, so access to that popular areas is secured, we just need to get the others under that protection.
There are many other types of users on these roads in the summer and we feel that will encourage MoF to consider the request to resume ownership of the road system on Boulder but it never hurts to have a lot of comments that can be forwarded on.
An online survey has been started to allow people an easy forum to voice their concerns over the potential closures. I have added a link to it below. Please take the 2 minutes (it literately is only two minutes) to answer this short 5 question survey and one of them is your name!!!
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/2GCKH8G
