Winter Trails Issues Early Results

The survey that our partner Tips.gg has prepared will be open until February and we will publish the French version soon, but I don't want to keep the results a secret.

If you haven’t yet completed the survey, do that before looking at other people’s answers.

Here is a PDF of the results as at January 26 representing 278 respondents over about 5 days.

This graph shows when people responded. The highest peak is Thursday evening through Friday and, I suspect, represents people who are paying keen attention to trail issues in Gatineau Park. On Monday we see a second peak and I suspect this represents exposure at TriRudy which caters to 6000+ triathletes.

As such I wonder if “general public” users are strongly represented in the results. It will be interesting to see if the outcomes change over the next month (assuming more casual Park users hear about the survey and participate).

Here are a few highlights I read from the data:

• Improved maintenance and grooming of ski trails is the standout priority for respondents.
• Appropriate use of trails is a somewhat distant second.
  (Note: the draft agenda I’ve seen has the roundtable talking about these two issues at it’s next meeting in early February.)
• Skijoring and other dog related suggestions appear unexpectedly strongly in the “other” responses.

There are a number of constructive and non-constructive responses, as might be expected. I hope we can take the feedback constructively and remember that we have a common goal; best winter trails experience.

Quick reminder – I had to pay $200 for an annual subscription for the survey and am asking generous people if they’ll contribute $10 to pay part of that cost.