Lighthouse Hall

Coburn Road Trail Work Party

Coburn Road Trail Tune Up

Have you ever been walking along a trail and randomly tripped over a root that pops up out of nowhere? I have, and let me tell you, it hurts! Falling on the trail is always quickly followed by a full investigation of the scene, backtracking the last few steps, re walking the area, and trying to discover what it was that caught you off guard bringing you to your hands and knees on the forest floor. Many time this type of forest foul play will be accompanied by questions like “what in the hell was that all about” or the very popular “they should fix that”. The “they” I speak of is normally a secret society of individual’s, trail fairies if you will, that head out into the forest to fix up trails making them safer, interesting, and creating amazing users experiences. Almost anywhere you go, these nameless, faceless folks are out there, sweating over shovels and picks, shaping trail through the forests while never asking for a helping hand or thank you. This May you can come and experience the feeling of working in the woods, creating, shaping, and joining your community as we take care of some of those nasty roots on a much-used trail right in Town.

The Coburn Road trail runs parallel to the E&N Rail line. It starts at the end of the existing gravel portion of Coburn Road and ends at Henry Morgan Park. This trail is primarily single track and undulates through some rough and overgrown forest with a lot of rooty sections. The trail is one of the only off-highway connections from “Downtown” Bowser to the Jaimeson Road Subdivision, the Bowser Elementary School, and via the Thompson Clark Ocean trail to Deep Bay. This trail creates an active transportation corridor for locals, students, and tourists. Also, as it directly connects downtown to the Deep Bay Marina,  providing safe, quiet travel from the business district to the docks.

The scope of maintenance is to widen and smooth the existing trail bed. This 225m long trail contains sections that need widening and gravel surface build up. The idea is to keep the trail typically natural, while widening and smoothing the surface to accommodate a variety of users including walkers, e-bikes, strollers, and adaptive forms of travel. As the trail is single track, we will be looking at widening the bed to around 1 meter wide, eliminate any sharp or off camber corners, and add at least one widened, pull-out area large enough to accommodate passing of accessible modes of transport like wheelchair or adaptive bike.

Lighthouse Recreation is happy to announce that we have been awarded a grant from the RDN to tune up the Coburn Road trail and enhance user experience! There are a lot of moving parts involved including sourcing material, delivery of material, vegetation maintenance, equipment rentals, and most importantly, volunteer help.

Working on a trail is a great way to stay active while giving back to your community. Tasks typically include everything from wheelbarrowing material and digging, to raking, smoothing, and pruning. Everyone and anyone can help, and all help is welcome.

The trail tune work party date is Sunday May 7 from 9am -2pm. Refreshments available for helpers.

We are really excited about the support we are receiving from local trail enthusiasts and want to thank all of them for helping. Blue Rock Aggregates at Spider Lake are providing the material for the trail surface. Rock Away Transport will be hauling the trail toppings, Sunbelt Rentals Parksville and Nanaimo have stepped in and donated the use of equipment for this project. We’ll be using a walk behind loader, dumper, and an electric wheelbarrow. If you have a job or a project, Sunbelt Rentals has the tools you need. Any job big or small, Sunbelt can make it happen. Bowser Towing will be coordinating equipment storage. Thanks again to all the support. If you want to get involved or if you have any questions, recreation@lighthousehall.ca