South Saskatchewan Regional Plan - Oct 17 ** NEW DATE

[Spinalguy]

Did a quick overview last night. Yes we have the potential to lose a significant portion of the trails club members have accessed in the past few years.
There are some proposed new provincialparks/wilderness areas and the new alberta trail guide will be used in classifying trails. ( no moterized group where invited when they wrote up this legisation).
I suggest every member here read this , become informed and attend this meeting on the 17 and voice your opinion in this.

just saying, but motorized groups were invited and i went. HUGE presence from the bike community at all venues. i went and presented a 4x4's opinions/issues at Cochrane venue.

[AstraX]

Seemed like a pretty good turnout.  Had to be over 100 people and there was a fairly good collection of Jeeps when I arrived.  I know a lot of people that went through the whole GAMP thing were skeptical but it does sound like they are putting a lot of effort into getting input from all user groups.  There are more meetings planned for November, it would be nice to see a good presence from our club there.

[BUKI]

I had to leave at 8:30 anything happen after that?? 
Ps.  Go Andy Go


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk - now Free

[morerpmfred]

Getting over the nausea over the whole thing. This kinda crap makes me want to vomit.
Will post up a more correct version in a couple of days.
There are things we can do to minimise this and that is by getting involved in the process. Read the plan. There is an online wirk book available. And there are something like 18 public consultation meetings for this all over southern alberta during the next month or so.
They said we will not be any losing any designated trails. Note ; all trails down south are designated quad trails.
They said they will be using a trail classification system for manegement. That is what they used at gamp.
And as we all know gamp is a total failure in recreational manegement but a perfect example of access manegement.
Speaking of gamp it was started but never completed, nore never will be as the purpose was to close over 20,000 kms of trails and give us less then a hundred miles of trails to access.
These quiestions where asked to the deputy minister and there was the usual typical response that a used car salesman would tell you.

[JackstandJohnny]

smells like bad....

when are the next consultation meetings Andy? i couldn't go last night, had a driveshaft grenade on my way home from work so i needed to address that first.

[JohnB]

They said we will not be any losing any designated trails. Note ; all trails down south are designated quad trails.

The stuff south of the highway is designated for all motorized users, not quads.  There is no designations north of the highway.

[AstraX]

Online workbook to give feedback on the plan: https://www.banister.ab.ca/ssrpphase3/

Information sessions: https://landuse.alberta.ca/Newsroom/Pages/PublicConsultations.aspx

There are stakeholder meetings and public meetings those days.  You have to register for the stakeholders meetings.

Calgary - November 13th
Airdrie - November 20th
Okotoks - November 27th
Cochrane - November 28th

[Hi Lo Silver]

The stuff south of the highway is designated for all motorized users, not quads.  There is no designations north of the highway.

Exactly and you've pointed that out. Which means if there are no designations present right now there will be no designation of trails north of highway 3 later. In other words they stick to their word and we loose everything we have access to right now.  All the trails south are marked quad and I will bet they turn into quad just like the sign indicates.

[Spinalguy]

Gun,
i ride much of the racehorse creek area and have never seen a sign?

i also wonder why the bike community is ok  and optimistic with the plan?

i get that many of us (including me) are bitter at GAMP and threw the towel in back in 2005 but the bike community got only 12kms of trail in Waiporous back then.
They invested heavily at Maclean (as was asked by srd) with all the signage you see (and the bridges, up and overs you do not see). Their hard work paid off with 60 more kms at Fallen Timber given to them and it looks like another 400kms coming soon.

Now i am talking true bike trails, not quad trails as we do not use them.

So, i wonder looking back, if we as a 4x4 community put as much effort as the bike group did at Maclean, would we have been given more at Waiporous?

So, doom and gloom your sport into oblivion or take a chapter out of the bike community and get involved again and make the .gov aware of continued effort...or not and wheel where ever the heck you want as you always have.

But, maybe its time for us doom and gloomer 4x4 guys to just shut up and let the new generation give it a go without the constant negativity from the old guard.

Yeah, i ride now but i KNOW i will wheel again when i am too old to ride 2 wheels. So, i will hope that the new generation of wheelers makes things happen for me by then or i too will wheel wherever i want legal or not.

i have said time after time that Maclean was the place to get in shape with signs, bridges, etc as it IS legal and based on the payoff to the bike community, it would have been worth it.

Cheers.

[Hi Lo Silver]

Tom I can understand the bike community not being part of the doom and gloomers of the 4x4 community. You continue to say bikers "single track" only got about 12 km and that's correct at the GAMP time but you fail to see the fact the bikers got the 1000km of quad trails to use as well. You are allowed on them but you choose not to use....that's your choice. I'd say you folks are coming out of that pretty good when now you have 1000km of quad trails plus what ever single track you can muster up.

Doom and gloom....absolutely...I've seen plan after plan get introduced with the same result. If my reminders to not trust ASRD and the PC government with trails for the 4x4's aren't within reason or realistic then have the mod's remove my posts...I know I have done a few myself.

Your point about never seeing a sign around the Race Horse and various other locations is my point exactly. They are not designated trails so will most likely be banned from use. Read Andy's post above ours. He points that out as well.

I think plenty of new users are being blinded by the slap on the back atta boy they receive from ASRD. Be cautious, quite often that slap turns to a stab in the back for your efforts.

[AstraX]

But where does the doom and gloom attitude get us?  I am one of the newer guys to this scene, I have heard a lot of the stories about GAMP and how it failed and I get it...it sucked.  But by being bitter and bringing that to the table with this new proposal, it isn't going to give us any chance of having this as a positive outcome for us.

Like Tom said, I think the biggest issue that 4x4 has going for it is that the community as a whole isn't going after what we want.  You might have a club here or there speak up, and make the odd effort at being involved, but that isn't going to be good enough.  We need CJA, FWS, LCK, Packrats, Jeep junkies, ABJK, etc to all be involved and to speak up about what is important to us.

Gun, guys like you are important to have in this picture.  I don't have the history, I don't know exactly what I am missing out on (after GAMP) and I don't know all the trail systems that I might miss out on in the future.  Being able to bring info to the table like that, where we can say This can't happen again.

I just hope we have good representation at these next meetings.  I have already booked November 13th off work so I can go to the stakeholders meeting in Calgary.  If we aren't willing to show up and fight for what we want, then maybe we don't deserve it.

[Hi Lo Silver]

That's certainly a much better idea then asking some of us to simply shut up about it as Tom put it. 
Tom you only go back as far as GAMP in the Alberta area. What most seem to not even be aware of is all the other areas effected over 30 years not just the past 10. We loose no matter how many butt's are kissed along the way. Other user groups gain because a good number of ASRD and Alberta officials are quad users.  Yes the South Sask Plan is far larger than just motorized users but it comes down to 4x4's loosing the majority.

[JackstandJohnny]

Dan i can make the November 28th stakeholder meeting in Okotoks.................. I'm more than willing to rattle some cages. I've got a big mouth; not afraid to use it.

[Spinalguy]

Gun, you are right, i could have worded it nicer. My bad. It just gets tiring to listen to the stabbing that took place 8 years ago. i am guilty of dooming and glooming but have decided that it is not productive to continually bring up old wounds. i guess i decided to shut up and thought a few more of the old guard could do the same.

Now to clarify some things. When we (i was 4x4 hardcore at the time) were asked to provide SRD all our trails in Waiporous so was the bike community. Both 4x4 and bike groups did that. The 2500kms the bike group provided included ZERO quad/truck trails. Of the 2500kms provided they got 14 (i think, maybe 12) kms of those 2500 provided.
Yes, we can use quad trails but we do not. It is akin to saying 4x4's are still allowed on the Trans Alta Rd and 940 as part of the 4x4 system.

Now this i do know. The bike community went into Maclean and signed the entire area. The 4x4 and Quad community has not signed anything. There are quad trails that should be 4x4 trails out there and might have been if the 4x4 community spent as much time making those trails sustainable as the bike group did. THOUSANDS of man hours have been done by the bike community. The payoff? 50 (or so) kms at Fallen Timber on the map and an upcoming 400kms!! more.

Now, what if the 4x4 community had done the same (i am guilty of wanting NOTHING to do with it back then)?
When i did get vocal again, i stated time and time again that we need to be in Maclean making it sustainable, but the 4x4 movement at the time decided to put all their efforts in Waiporous. Good on them, but to this day i cross a bridge that was put in by 4x4 guys in Waiporous and is not open to 4x4's.

We can not undo what we did or did not do back then, but if we take a page from the bike community, we can start showing up and working towards an amicable relationship with the NEW SRD bigwigs and maybe, just maybe, we can salvage something.

i apologize for saying shut up, but the feedback from the meeting last Thursday was the 4x4 'speakers' were not respectful and did not help any 4x4 user in what the future may bring.
A word of advice to anyone that is going to stakeholder meetings, be respectful, ask other stake holders what their concerns are and address them professionally and most importantly without emotion, just facts.
i do not know if anyone i any club is a land use guru but we need one that cam put together positive facts that dispel some ridiculous views that other stakeholders have regarding motorized users. i know the bike community was well prepared and they are optimistic about this new PLAN.

We can be the rednecks they think we all are at the meetings or we can completely surprise them with nothing less than a 'white collar' approach.

Hey Gun, at least you still 4x4, i and many others sold out for 2 wheels or a quad but i know one day i will be back in a jeep and wheeling as much as i now ride.
Cheers.

[morerpmfred]

Thank you for the heads up Tom. I could have been me being aggressive asking questions on the whole process.
On the area north of the highway down south there are some intersections that are numbered that are the same numbers on all the different maps from the different snowmobile and quad clubs that use the area so maybe they are designated?
One thing that was clear was the sensitivity to riparean vegitation from some of the other attendees.
This ssrp also has the ability to dictate what the new access manegement plan for the livingstone area. With gamp what was on the plan was different to the people implementing it on the ground. And this plan could dictate where the new access plan will go in direction.
So what we really need is for everyone to read the plan and fill out the online questionare and of possable to attend these work sessions.