Sometime in the late 90s, I made the decision to make the move from Whistler to Squamish to trail build and ride full time.
I and other volunteers toiled away on the existing trails, learning from others and watching the effects of the weather on our favourite trails.
As the numbers of people using the trails gradually increased, so did the need for maintaining our local trails.
The more trail improvements we made, the more people came to ride bikes.
In 2008, Dave Gillie, Don Petrocco, Cliff Miller, Mike Nelson, Chris McCrum and Barry McLane (sorry to everyone else I missed) had started the process for a new trail.
They flagged a rough alignment through some of the toughest terrain on Diamondhead. The route they chose was steep and required several bridges to cross the many steep drainages as it crossed through many old cut blocks.
The thick forest, and deep steep drainages posed major challenges but we really wanted to build the new trail.
All the building and traveling was tiring and it was exciting to have an opportunity to share my trail building skills that were evolving from many seasons of bike travel, racing bikes, skiing, building video segments and designing and building early slope style competitions.
Half Nelson was finally our opportunity to build a trail with machinery and we were excited for the opportunity to share what we had learned over the years.
The Province grant had $100,000 budgeted for the new trail, thanks to Norbert Grainacher and Mike Nelson. SORCA, our local cycling association, had applied for permissions and the Province put the project out for contractors to bid.
Some of bigger contractors didn’t even bid because of the massive scale and challenges presented by the terrain. Dream Wizards bid was half of the projected budget, we felt it was important to spend some of the grant money on other trails in the network to help upgrade and legitimize the existing trails.
Up until this point most of the trails in the network were unsanctioned, but the province was finally working with us to improve and legitimize our trails!
We constructed Half Nelson over a single winter.
The build was challenging. The record rainfall and snowfall that winter really helped reinforce the need for proper drainage. Even with skilled volunteers like Chris McCrum, Steve Klassen, Clark Lewis, Barry McClane, Roland Benesocky, Chris Fulton and others, the small budget didn’t allow for purchasing massive amounts of expensive culverts.
So we built wooden box culverts like the old boys that forged in all our access and connector trails.
We never imagined the roaring success Half Nelson would become, and it has enabled our local bike club to do massive fund raisers and many others to continue to build and shape local trails.
Half Nelson has taught me that if you work hard enough you can create a destination for others to come enjoy. It is still a dream to have stable funding available year-round, but we are still grateful to do something we love daily.
I must emphasize that the Squamish trail network was built by many amazing volunteers over several decades.
Thanks to so many volunteer that have selflessly given their time to help create todays trail network.
Here is how you can support their work. We are organizing a fundraiser to maintain the Half-Nelso trail.
Please contribute to our GoFundMe page whatever you can so we can maintain the trail that has brought thousands of people to our town.
Ted Tempany is a local trail builder.
