The Woodlot in Maple Ridge is not for the faint of heart. Home to some of the most challenging trails in the Fraser Valley, you first have to earn your turns. The climb from the parking lot is a grunt up an old skidder road that is sometimes mistaken for a creek in wet weather. The abundance of water has contributed to significant erosion and trail damage over the years making the steep grunt of a climb an exercise in dodging rocks too.

This is the most recent project taken on by the FVMBA Trail Crew… separating the water from the trail and creating a more pleasant trail experience. Converting a double track into singletrack involves a lot of digging. With an abundance of rocks of all sizes readily available, the crew built retaining walls to raise the trail bed and help with directing water off the trail. The new trail is barely recognizable from the old; what was once a straight line is now a curvy path. But don’t let the curves deceive you, the climb is still a grunt that demands some extra leg and lung power to be successful in climbing it.

Work is still ongoing, but you can check out their progress at your next visit to the Woodlot.

The new work truly is a transformation. Many thanks to trail crew for all their hard work and sweat that made this possible. The present weather is too dry for transplanting ferns and other greenery so we’ll be back in the fall to complete renaturalization of the areas that are no longer part of the trail.

Note: Before photo is not of the exact same location as we forgot to take one on the day we started, but most of the original trail looked very similar.