Trails Update: June 5, 2025

lord of the squirrels storytime

I probably sound like an old man to anyone within earshot lately: I have a story to share at every rock, tree and turn on Lord of the Squirrels. 

“Oh! I broke the sledgehammer trying to break that rock!” 

“This is where I found the biggest hedgehog (mushroom) I’ve ever seen!”

“We used to have lunch sitting on that huge tree over the creek (it’s now broken).” 

It’s nice to be revisiting this forest but there’s a lot of work to do! We’re being thorough, scraping 10 years worth of needles and cones from drains, re-exposing the trail’s glorious orange dirt. We’re patching brake ruts, widening turns where we can and re-capping sections that turned to  dust through whistler’s now frequent droughts. Lucky for us, honorary trail crew member Rob Mullen is once again digging with us. Rob first joined us for trail days in 2014… before LOTS had an official name. My working name for it in the first season was “First Rule of Bike Club” (old man voice). When we reached the tools Rob shared he had missed the trail day through this section. I remember that day well… “It was scheduled at the same time as the Crankworx slopestyle, …, the only diggers that joined me were Marilyn, Ken and Jesse Melamed.” I babbled on. Some trailwork also got done.     

was bridge

My sustainable trail building students' fieldwork covered woodworking this week. I’d been saving a bridge replacement on trash for this occasion. All of the supplies were available on site so the small group could experience every step of the process without lugging lumber over long distances. The decking logs were promising but they put up a serious fight - this particular cedar was riddled with knots. Preparing the framing pieces, however, was too easy. Peeling Western Red Cedar bark this time of the year is a breeze. We replaced the lowest segment of the curved bridge and as you can understand, I’m saving the rest of this bridge replacement for my next class (in September).  

delineator trail night

Every time WORCA surveys our membership about trail “wants and needs”... overwhelmingly, “better climb trails” and “more blue trails” top the list. Having lived in Emerald estates for 20 years, my legs could certainly attest that neither of these things existed in the No-Flow zone. A few years ago, WORCA began to tinker with that part of the network and piece by piece, some semblance of a blue trail came to life. This week, with the help of our Tuesday night volunteers, another piece of the blueifying puzzle came together at the Alpine meadows end of Delineator. Fanatykco sponsored the event where the last grade reducing segment got benched in. Rob was stoked since there seemed to be an unlimited supply of rocks there but to almost everyone’s surprise there was also some gold in the No Flow zone! We were able to cap most of the bypass creating a smooth ribbon easing riders into the (mostly) technical network. The trail crew will let users get used to the changes before re-naturalizing the original segment. Thanks again to Mr Kung and the Whistler Secondary School Outdoor Leadership Program (WSSOLP) students for starting on this project! 


Next week, we will be tackling another “need blue trail” project… We’re working on the Danimal South> Rock Rabbit connection. Sign up here for details on how to join us!

See you on the Trails!

Dan Raymond

WORCA Lead Trail Builder

Nicole Koshure