Alberta’s Trans Canada Trail and Iron Horse Trail

Western province showcases its TCT urban paths and rail trails

The province of Alberta is the largest per capita donator to Canada’s nation-wide, multi-use Trans Canada Trail, and perhaps as a result it boasts not one but four Alberta TCT routes. I was invited to explore two sections of the trail by very different means: by bicycle on Edmonton’s River Valley Parks, and by all-terrain vehicle (ATV) on northeastern Alberta’s Iron Horse rail trail.

Edmonton’s River Valley Parks

With 460 parks, the city of Edmonton boasts the largest expanse of urban parkland in North America. Twenty-two parks comprise the “ribbon of green” that lines the North Saskatchewan river, and the Trans Canada Trail joins over 150 kilometres of total urban bike trails.

Accordingly, Edmonton’s bike community is active and ardent. Visit Alberta’s capital city for their annual Bikeology festival every June; drop by the Edmonton Bicycle Commuter Society’s non-profit Bike Works shop; or join a “Show N Go” ride with the friendly members of the Edmonton Bicycling and Touring Club.

View photos of Edmonton City Cycling: River Valley Trail, North Saskatchewan bridges, Bike Works, Earth’s General Store, and Bikeology’s “mocktails on the bridge” event (20 images).

Alberta’s Iron Horse Trail

It’s taken 10 municipalities more than 3 decades to transform almost 300 kilometers of abandoned rail bed into a visitor-friendly section of the Trans Canada Trail, but they did it.

Thanks to the grassroots efforts of individuals (Riverland Recreational Trail Society) and communities (Muni-Corr), Alberta’s Iron Horse Trail (AIHT) now passes through boreal forest, farmland, and wild animal habitat to connect 15 historic towns in the province’s northeastern “Lakeland” region.

Still in progress and partly a wilderness trail, the Iron Horse caters primarily towards equestrians, snowmobilers and ATV’rs at the moment. That may go against the Trans Canada Trail’s non-motorized use philosophy, but bear in mind that it’s these community users who have maintained the trails over the years and worked so passionately to preserve it. In conversation with the townspeople along the route (in Heinsburg, Elk Point, St. Paul, Bonnyville, Fort Kent and Cold Lake) I was convinced that they are very excited about welcoming hikers and bikers as the trail moves towards completion.

All the trail’s staging areas provide water and toilets for example; and food and accommodations are not far away. I was particularly impressed by the tiny town of Elk Point which has blue prints for an off-the-grid “green” visitor and community centre.

View photos

At this point organizers suggest that though it is considered an unsupervised backcountry, the trail nevertheless demonstrates a community-supported legacy experience along Alberta’s oldest and longest continuous trail.

View photos of Alberta’s Iron Horse Trail: Heinsburg, Elk Point, St. Paul, Bonnyville, Glendon, Fort Kent, Cold Lake.

Central Valley Greenway for cycling

Vancouver area multi-use trail offers a bushwhack to bikers willing to explore

The name “Still Creek” may not quicken the pulse of southern B.C.’s white water paddlers; but the blackberry thorns that line the tributary’s urban bike trail are sure to draw blood from a Lower Mainland peddler or two.

Greenway looks like a country lane between Gilmore and Willingdon

Not only is Still Creek one of Vancouver’s original city streams, but it actually flows away from the ocean and toward the Fraser River. While municipal planners pore over a 50 year plan to rehabilitate the historic watershed; a Vancouver-based collection of cycling advocates have ~ with the support of VanCity, Translink, Transport Canada, and other private and public organizations ~ scratched up enough funding, support and publicity in six years to slam a multi-use trail down along its course.

When it’s signed, sealed and landscaped in March of 2007, the 22-kilometre Central Valley Greenway will span Vancouver, Burnaby, and New Westminster and offer those cities’ residents an chance to travel to workplaces, shopping centres, schools, and transit stations without their cars; more Greenway, less Kingsway.

Until then, adventurous local cyclists have discovered that ~ as Richard Campbell of Better Environmentally Sound Transportation (B.E.S.T.) puts it ~ there’s “a functional interim route” just begging for a good urban bushwhack.

Urban Orienteering on the Central Valley Greenway

Spray-painted artwork along the Central Valley Greenway

The spring I turned 35, I found out that four ligaments join the bottom half of my leg to the top, and that when two of them snap on a damned bike descent of a Grouse Mountain trail, it’s a very bad thing.

Once the reconstructive surgery was completed and I had learned to walk again, I decided that my cycling energy was better spent on more moderate adventures.

I pored over TransLink’s Regional Vancouver Cycling Map & Guide and discovered that the Lower Mainland’s immense Fraser Valley floor offers an extensive network of flat-earth forest paths, linear parks, dike trails, and greenways. (For a list of retailers who sell the guide [$3.95], visit www.translink.bc.ca/ and click on Maps.)

Some of them, like Stanley Park, Pacific Spirit Regional Park, and the B.C. Parkway Trail, are well-known and well-used; but many, such as the newly christened Central Valley Greenway, are largely unpaved, unsigned, and unexplored.

A Two-Wheel Odyssey to a Table by the Sea

Ulysses can attest that sometimes the longest journey begins with a single malt. Not long after they set out on their fabled odyssey, Ulysses and his crew found themselves lingering in the land of the lotus-eaters for spirits and nosh by the sun-warmed sea.

It kind of sounds like patio season on the sea wall, doesn’t it? Like Ulysses, you set out with the best of intentions: your bike is tuned and you’re determined to ride hard, but the cafés, by God, the outdoor cafés! Their breeze-blown tablecloths, tinkling glasses, and promises of sublime indolence make them nearly impossible to just…ride…past.

Fortunately, you don’t have to. The solution to combining hard-core and Hefeweizen is literally attached to our familiar Seaside pathway signs. It’s a stylized maple-leaf symbol indicating that by merely getting on your bike and pedalling a few bite-size kilometres, you are cycling the Trans Canada Trail, a 17,000-plus-kilometre, coast-to-coast recreational trail soon to be the world’s longest. The Vancouver section happens to include a smorgasbord of roll-in café patios that are entirely free of traffic and blessed with views of the North Shore mountains, the Pacific Ocean, and the Gulf Islands.