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The Trail Collector
Creator of sunshine-coast-trails.com Becky Wayte is probably the Sunshine Coast’s most avid nature bather.
You might call Becky Wayte a wanderer. Almost every day for the last 20 years, Becky has hiked or biked a trail somewhere on the Sunshine Coast. It wasn’t until a couple of years ago though, that she became a collector.
Some people collect stamps; others baseball cards. Becky collects trails, maps them with a GPS, and documents them on sunshine-coast-trails.com, a website she created for outdoor enthusiasts. The site lists hundreds of trails, from Langdale to Earl’s Cove, with descriptions, maps, difficulty ratings and useful links. She has her favourites – three of which she describes in her own words in a sidebar to this story.
In 2011, hiking three to four hours a day, almost every day, Becky managed to map almost all of the Sunshine Coast’s trails in six months. She’s been updating her collection ever since. The Coast is home to some prolific trail builders, it seems.
“I actually thought it would take me a couple of years,” she tells me. “But I quickly realized that I’m a little obsessive. When I start something, I need to see it through to the end.”
But the truth is, collecting trails never ends. New trails are always springing up and some remain well-guarded secrets. In a recent interview with pinkbike.com, local mountain-bike phenom, Holly Feniak, describes the Coast’s trails as: “Dreamy. Loamy, mossy, bouncy, incredibly green, and in the secret spots … all that and steep.”
Cliff Gilker Park, Roberts Creek.
She might have added ‘never-ending’!
“For heaven’s sake, stop building trails,” Becky laughs, when I ask her about the Coast’s trail builders. “I actually love finding new trails and I admit, there might be the odd one I don’t know about. I’m always trying to keep up!”
For a moment, we think we may have found a new one. It’s an unusually hot day in May and we’re walking through a dusty trail off Field Road in Wilson Creek. We’re accompanied by Cody, a large, lovable dog from the nearby SPCA where Becky volunteers each week as a dog-walker. The path veers past someone’s back yard and into the forest.
“Let’s take a look,” says Becky, in her element. A few minutes later we come to a dead-end. Cody looks at us expectantly and we return the way we came. So what inspired Becky to take on this labour of love?
“I have three dogs and one has issues with other dogs, so I wanted to find new trails to hike where there weren’t so many people,” she says. “There were few websites, but they only featured the most popular hikes, places like Mount Daniel, so I decided I’d do it myself.”
Becky’s well qualified. Not only does she love the outdoors, but she learned to build websites through her work teaching computer courses in the Adult Basic Education Program at Capilano University in Sechelt. With the website established, Ryan Robertson, a Squamish-based app developer, who specializes in creating trail applications for iPhones and Androids, contacted Becky. Becky provided the GPS (Global Positioning System – the satellite navigation application) data and Ryan created the app. Trailmapps: Sunshine Coast costs $10 and is available at the Apple Store and Google Play.
For old-school trail lovers, she’s also created waterproof trail maps that are available in Gibsons at Spin Cycles, and in Sechelt at Source for Sports, the Sechelt Visitors’ Centre, and Off The Edge Adventure Sports.
Outdoors, technology couldn’t be further from Becky’s mind. While she’s always hiked to combat weight gain, she’s also convinced of nature’s therapeutic benefits. The Japanese have a name for it: shinrin-yoku, or forest bathing. Becky cites Japanese research, which points to the many benefits of simply being in nature – lower blood pressure, higher creative aptitude and boosted immune systems.
“I prefer the term ‘nature-bathing’ because I find just being out in nature makes me feel better. I always come home feeling better than when I left.”
Well, almost always.
Becky sheepishly recalls one particular hike that went awry, much to her husband’s despair. “I was hiking up Elphinstone and I’d let people know where I was going and what time I’d return. It took a lot longer than I’d expected though and my phone died.
“I got back around 7:45 p.m. – not the 5 p.m. I’d told my husband. He was pretty mad.”
The experience didn’t sour Becky’s love of Mount Elphinstone. In fact, the Mount Elphinstone Summit Trail ranks in her three favourite hikes and bikes. (See below.)
Kinnikinnick Park, West Sechelt.
Sidebar
My Three Favourite Hikes & Bikes, by Becky Wayte
Mount Elphinstone Summit Trail (hike only)
This is a long, fairly difficult climb, but the view at the very top is worth it. The trail to the top can be accessed from the top of Sprockids or via some feeder trails off B & K logging road in Roberts Creek. If you take your time and enjoy a picnic and rest at the top, this hike will likely take you five or six hours. Make lots of noise or wear a bell so the bears hear you coming.
Ruby Klein Traverse – Suncoaster Trail (hike or bike)
Beautiful views of Ruby Lake and a hand carved bench greet you at the highest point along the trail. Easy to make a whole day trip out of this even though the hike itself will probably only take you a couple of hours. You can visit the Iris Griffiths Centre, take a swim in Klein Lake and there is even a feeder trail down to the Ruby Lake restaurant (Trattoria Italiano).
McNeill Lake Circle Route (hike or bike)
This is one of my favourite destinations in the summer months because I always combine a bike ride with a swim. The lake itself is not that well known so often no one else is there, especially on weekdays. There are several trails that connect to create a loop around the lake, with access to the lake from a couple of spots. I park on Middlepoint Forest Service Road and take Copper Head, Dry Feet, a logging road, Old Pole Road and back to Copper Head. There is a short trail off the logging road just north of Dry Feet that takes you into the lake. This is an excellent place to ride your mountain bike if you have pre-teen kids or you just want a fairly flat ride (we don’t have many flat rides on the Coast). Hiking it probably takes about 1.5 hours and by bike about an hour, unless you stop to enjoy a swim.
For the definitive web guide to the Sunshine Coast’s trails, visit http://www.sunshine-coast-trails.com.
One night in Flin Flon
What minus 40 looks like in Flin Flon, birth place of Bobby Clarke and the phrase, “it’s a dry cold”.
They don’t sell postcards in Flin Flon, Manitoba; at least none that I found. It’s a desperately cold place most of the year.
“Chilly” is how the pilot describes it upon landing. Helen at the car rental desk confirms that, yes, it’s cold. “But tolerable without the wind.”
How cold?
Minus 39.6, according to the airport’s only baggage handler. “We’ll call it minus 40,” he says.
Celsius … Fahrenheit, it doesn’t matter. My idea of cold will never be the same. Lager’s cold. So is a dip in the sea off Margate. But February 1st in Flin Flon is worthy of its own definition of cold.
A kilometre below where Javier is standing it’s about 55 degrees warmer – which isn’t much consolation really.
My colleague Javier and I are here from Vancouver to film a video in Flin Flon’s copper mine. We try to look casual, hauling our camera gear across the car park to the rental truck. “It’s not that bad,” says Javier. “No, not so bad,” I wheeze, acutely aware of snot freezing in my nose.
The pallid sun we’d last seen during a stopover in Winnipeg has long since set and we drive in twilight to Flin Flon. Manitoba looks grainy monochrome, a stunted boreal forest dotted with lakes frozen into frigid stillness.
In Flin Flon, we plug our truck into a block heater outside the Victoria Inn. Inside, we eat perogies and drink beer. Our server tells us that minus 40 is mitigated by the fact that Flin Flon’s cold “is a dry cold”.
Her tongue is not in her cheek.
Fortified by curiosity, we drive into town, and then walk down Main Street. Most of the houses are old and wooden, with rooftops wilting under snow whipped into drifts. At the Co-op I buy myself a Flin Flon Bombers hockey jersey. I tell the cashier about a friend from Saskatchewan, who hated coming to play hockey against Flin Flon, the toughest team in the Canadian junior league.
At first she’s offended. “Why,” she demands. “Because they knew they’d have to fight,” I tell her. She smiles. “We love our Bombers,” she says.
We tread gingerly on a snowy sidewalk up the street to Flin Flon’s war memorial and a view overlooking the town. Fumes from the mine are the only thing obscuring a sky full of stars. The only other person on the street nods hello as he passes us, and calls us pussies for wearing gloves. He’s not wearing gloves.
A short drive away, we arrive at Flinty, a statue of a cartoonish-looking prospector. Gloves off, I photograph Flinty – built in tribute to Josiah Flintabbatey Flonatin. Flonatin appears in a sci-fi novel called The Sunless City. He pilots a submarine through a bottomless lake and into an underground world through a hole lined with gold. Prospector Tom Creighton had a copy of the book when he stumbled on a rich vein of copper here in 1918.
Flin Flon might be the only town named after a character in a dime-store paperback.
But that’s another story.
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- Prepared for the worst.
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- Flinty by day.
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- A jumbo drill at work, a kilometre below Flin Flon.
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- Five minutes in Winnipeg and he’s a Jets fan.
Bites by bike: Two-wheeled culture thrives in Portland
Bites by bike: Two-wheeled culture thrives in Portland
Counting calories makes for a vicious cycle in Portland, Oregon. Read all about it in the North Shore News!
Vicious cycle: Biking the Big Apple’s core and beyond
You try and raise your kids right - Minutes into the Five Boro bike ride and Emma's nabbed by NYPD.
F. Scott Fitzgerald loved Manhattan. In The Great Gatsby, he described its “first wild promise of all the mystery and all the beauty in the world,” when viewed from the Queensboro Bridge.
Chances are Fitzgerald wasn’t crossing the Queensboro on a bike when he wrote those words.
With 30,000 other cyclists.
In the pouring rain.
I looked back at Manhattan over a river of bobbing bike helmets on the Queensboro Bridge and saw imposing shades of grey, the tops of skyscrapers concealed by even greyer clouds.
It was Kilometre 24 of New York’s annual TD Bank Five Boro Bike Tour, a 68-kilometre celebration of car-free cycling through Manhattan, The Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island. The week before, temperatures hit 32 degrees Celsius. Today, the day of the big ride, the reason we’d trained together as a family, our motivation for flying almost 4,000 kilometres to New York, the mercury was barely nudging 10.
30,000 cyclists brave the rain in New York's Five Boro bike ride.
“This is actually fun,” said my daughter Emma, without even a hint of sarcasm. “Really!” she added, registering my look of disbelief.
Emma was clearly enjoying being the centre of attention as one of the tour’s younger participants. Soon after our 8-a.m. mass start from Battery Park and ride through the concrete canyon of Sixth Avenue, she’d been noticed by three NYPD bike cops as we snaked through Central Park.
“Hey, look at that kid, she’s barely breaking a sweat!” shouted one.
“What’s your name kid?” shouted another. “Well, listen Emma, don’t be thinking of beating us to the finish line, Emma. We can ticket you.”
We seemed destined to bump into the trio throughout the day, despite the numbers of riders involved and the distance covered. Accommodating 30,000 cyclists through New York’s five boroughs and across five major bridges must be a logistical minefield.
The fact that the tour has been staged annually since 1977 surely helps, but it’s only in recent years the city has begun to embrace bike culture on the other 364 days of the year. New York has expanded its urban bicycle network by 320 kilometres since 2006 while the number of New Yorkers commuting by bike has doubled in the last six In one of the busiest cities in the world, home to seven million people and 13,000 honking yellow taxi cabs, where rush hour starts at 5 a.m. and finishes about 15 hours later, riding a bike here is not as intimidating as you might think.
The day before the Five-Boro Bike Tour we had rented bikes from Liberty Bicycles five blocks south of Central Park. With some trepidation we cycled our aluminum hybrids west to the Hudson River Greenway, the longest stretch of a series of bike paths that circle the island of Manhattan. While busy with walkers, joggers and inline skaters, the greenway with its dedicated lanes and traffic signals is a great place to get acclimatized to biking in New York.
And after our first two days spent hopping on and off open-top buses visiting the Big Apple’s more obvious attractions — Empire State Building, for example — we felt a little less like tourists. (You can hardly visit New York and not visit such places, but be prepared for long lineups and short tempers.)
Crossing the Queensboro Bridge, over a century old, much loved by F. Scott Fitzgerald and made famous by Simon and Garfunkel’s 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin’ Groovy).
With the eight-lane Joe DiMaggio Highway rumbling just a few metres to our left, it felt good to be setting our own pace, gliding south along the Hudson River past waterfront tennis courts, batting cages and soccer fields, piers and playgrounds. We had little trouble navigating the older, narrower streets of Greenwich Village, where we hooked up with a two-wheeled tour conducted by Levi Zwerling and Bike The Big Apple.
The company takes small groups of cyclists beyond the tourist trail through New York’s diverse neighbourhoods.
Nowhere epitomized that more than the Bedford- Stuyvesant neighbourhood in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where we cycled empty streets in eerie silence.
Home to a burgeoning population of Satmar, a Hasidic movement of mostly eastern European Jews who survived World War II, this well-kept community of row houses and apartments might just be the quietest place in all of New York’s five boroughs during Saturday sabbath. Conservatively dressed families, distinguished by men wearing oversized fur hats called shtreimel, ambled along the sidewalks ignoring the less modestly clothed cyclists in their midst.
By contrast, we stopped for a noisy lunch and beer-tasting at the Brooklyn Brewery, whose 150-year-old premises have been restored to their original bare brick and timber finery.
Various estimates put the number of community gardens in New York at more than 600, with 10 per cent of those located in the hip East Village and Manhattan’s Lower East Side. We paused to admire one, only for two of its creators to stop by and supplement Levi’s tour with their own version.
“That happens a lot in the East Village,” said Levi with a smile.
The ride back to Manhattan across Brooklyn Bridge’s busy boardwalk proved to be the most hair-raising part of the day. As we weaved in and out of pedestrians, clearly we no longer thought of ourselves as tourists — or at least not the kind of tourists who wander in and out of bike lanes. (Think Stanley Park seawall on any summer weekend.)
The experience helped prepare us for the Five Boro Bike Tour, which required plenty of weaving with almost 30,000 companions jockeying for space. While we passed expensivelooking Cannondales, Cervélos, Konas and Bianchis all requiring various repairs — usually flats — our trusty rentals kept us moving through the Bronx where churchgoers smiled at us in sympathy as the rain intensified.
Oh, the humanity! Bikers take cover under the RFK Bridge in Astoria Park during the TD Bank Five Boro Bike Tour.
In Queens we took refuge from the elements at Astoria Park under the RFK Bridge with thousands of other soaked riders. In the trendy Brooklyn neighbourhood of DUMBO (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass) at Kilometre 43 we fell inside a busy Starbucks for a family meeting to answer the following:
Quit the tour here and shortcut to our hotel for hot showers and hot food, or slog on through the deluge to the Verrazano Narrows Bridge and the finish with everyone else at Staten Island?
“We’re going to come last if we stay in here all day,” said Emma, who clearly had decided on behalf of the family, much to her brother Ryan’s irritation.
So it was with some pride the Judd parents watched their kids high-five each other at mid-span of the Verrazano, once the world’s largest suspension bridge and closed to bikes on all but this day of the year.
Close ahead and all downhill was the finish at Staten Island.
Seven hours earlier, back in Manhattan and still half asleep, we’d cycled down Broadway and through Times Square (on a designated bike lane, no less!) to the starting line at Battery Park.
From here on the Verrazano, the city’s said to look spectacular on a clear day. Pelted by torrential rain and surrounded by leaden clouds, the view we got was lousy.
And we didn’t care.
If you go:
Bike New York organizes the annual TD Bank Five Boro Bike Tour and has a wealth of information on its website (www.bikenewyork.org) for anyone planning to cycle in the Big Apple. While the Five Boro tour is the biggest event of its kind in the U.S., Bike New York also stages smaller rides throughout the year, details of which you’ll find on its website.
Otherwise, to plan a twowheeled adventure in New York, visit nyc.gov/dotnews and click on “Bicyclists” on the left-hand side. There you can download or order the comprehensive New York City Cycling Map. Not only does the map illustrate the routes to ride, it also lists dozens of bike rental stores throughout New York’s five boroughs.
We rented reliable adult and children’s bikes from Liberty Bicycles (libertybikesny.com or 212 757-2418) in Midtown Manhattan (9th Avenue and 55th Street).
Bike The Big Apple (bikethebigapple.com or 1 877-865-0078) offers several different guided tours throughout the week and can tailor tours to suit individual requests.
New York offers hundreds of hotel options, but hotels that accommodate bikes are harder to find. The Buckingham Hotel (888 511-1900), two blocks south of Central Park, is well located and bike friendly.
After a long, wet bike ride, nothing aids recovery quite like new sun glasses.
We found New York’s subway system to be safe, reliable and relatively affordable at $2 a trip or $7 for a day-pass.While Manhattan is a great place to walk and browse, with a little planning you can easily navigate via subway between the city’s major sights. Hop-on, hop-off double-decker bus tours operated by CitySights NY (citysightsny.com) hit the highlights for $44 (adults) or $34 (children from five to 11) for a 24-hour period.
In the same vein, New York’s CityPass (citypass.com) at $79 (adults) or $59 (youth, 13-17) will buy you entry to six main attractions, including the Empire State Building observatory. It will also get you to the front of most lineups. For detailed tourism information, including the city’s calendar of events, visit nycgo.com
Desperately seeking ….
I must have walked past it a hundred times.
On the beach, just by the Camp Byng sign, the small, plastic olive container was concealed at the base of a fir tree, tucked behind a dead cedar.
Inside were all sorts of trinkets – a bead necklace, a small plastic dinosaur, pencil and notebook for messages.
Someone had hidden it there in 2004 – 212 years after Capt. George Vancouver had camped nearby and given Gower Point its name.
Cap’n George would have liked geocaching. A handheld electronic device equipped with a global positioning system could have helped him find the Northwest Passage.
The cache by the Camp Byng sign has been my only success to date. I’ve since been on futile geocaching missions to Whispering Firs park in Gibsons, Cliff Gilker park, and the bridge outside Roberts Creek legion. The latter venue had a black bear waiting for me.
The story I’m supposed to write about geocaching was due yesterday.
I can’t wait to read it.
A blast from summer past
It took a while, but click Banks-Vernonia for a published look at part of our travels through Oregon this summer.
Cannon Beach: Like a great duvet, but with bed bugs
You’re in an expensive hotel and you throw yourself on top of a snow-white duvet. Cannon Beach is a bit like that. We’d been driving for ages, parked and walked straight to Cannon Beach. On seeing the white sand, Haystack Rock and the Pacific Ocean, we all did the same thing: flopped on the sand and made sand angels. Then we applied sunscreen, rolled around some more, then watched Ryan and Emma bury each other.
Now I’m sitting by a camp fire in Warrenton, near Astoria, typing almost blind and marvelling at how good it feels to be covered in sand, smoke and stale sunscreen. Of course, my bedfellows may disagree, but they’re in the tent and almost asleep.
I’d write more, but wifi is sketchy in rural Oregon campsites, plus I’ve got to pee so bad my back teeth are floating.
Young buck moves in next door: There goes the neighbourhood
Working in a basement is so much nicer when visitors pass by your window.
Offbeat and online
I have never used the word ‘nestled’ in a travel story.
UK (The Times) and North American daily newspapers (Dallas Morning News, Oregonian, Montreal Gazette, Vancouver Sun/Province) have featured my work for more than 20 years and I have edited travel and adventure sections in Canada and England.
My young family is intimately acquainted with urban bike lanes from Manhattan to Portland. They know a ziptrek from a zipline, a kayak from a canoe, and a luge from a skeleton. In or out of a wetsuit, they know a dive when they see one.
Solo, or with family, I usually travel on a budget and on assignment. Follow my progress here.
and here
and here
Nev Judd: Online and out there 