On Wednesday April 20 the Winter Trails Roundtable met once again to wrap up the discussions we’ve been having over the winter. Here are my personal impressions of the meeting.
Once again, not all members were able to attend and I felt this put off progress on the most contentious issue—grooming—though other progress was made.
In what follows I explore the group dynamic a bit before turning to what we heard and did.
The process of the Roundtable has been a somewhat structure-intensive one and it’s very possible that the amount of time needed to talk through the issues has inhibited participation. Busy people have a hard time dedicating time to meeting after meeting and we’ve had 6 meetings this winter. It’s impossible to know, though, whether lack of attendance means frustration and lack of interest. There are certainly legitimate reasons why a number of the erstwhile participants might not have been able to make it. I did confirm with one no-show his continued dedication. In fact, as an ardent grooming-concerns-advocate he expressed himself optimistically concerning the progress he’s seen.
The mandate of the Roundtable is broader than just dissatisfaction with grooming but there is no question that the grooming issue is one of particular interest. We did talk about it over the winter. Did we solve all the problems? How could we? Even if those most concerned with grooming could have been there every time (which is to say those most critical of cross country trail grooming, since those whose job it is to do and manage the grooming were there), even if those others could have been there, the second level challenge would be to communicate the outcomes (good or bad) to the broader Park user community. So we still have a way to go on that.
I think the outcomes so far have been good but since not everyone has been at the table I also don’t think we can say that the outcomes have actually come out (not that they’re being hidden, rather that they haven’t fully baked yet).
Now turning to other outcomes; at this last meeting more than one person who was not in the employ of the NCC made congratulatory noises about what we’ve done over the winter.
We had discussed skier/snowshoer conflict on the trails and it looks like by next winter Gatineau Park will have some new snowshoeing in the south part of the park that will include a lookout, a place to warm up, and be designed to avoid trail confusion and conflict.
There are also efforts underway with respect to signage aimed at reducing ski/snowshoe trail confusion although we didn’t get much specifics on this.
The NCC has compiled examples and best practices on trail etiquette from other places and a subgroup from the Roundtable is volunteering to work these into suggestions that might be useful in Gatineau Park. We hope these will come forward for public discussion through the fall so as to be in place for next winter.
We were told that the Recreation Management Plan consultations which began in the fall of 2009 would resurface again in the fall of 2011. We expect that issues surrounding this plan will provide more fodder for the Roundtable.
We also heard a little more detail on the findings of the user satisfaction survey from which some information was included with the end of March announcement that grooming was over for the season. This series of in-person questionnaires is being run by Environics and has not yet completed, running as it does over several seasons. Anecdotally from discussions of the survey it seems that winter park users are predominantly from the region, with more from Ontario than Quebec, other seasons have an increased proportion of visitors from further afield (so, tourists rather than regular users). Clearly there will be more interesting information buried in the data, like popularity of various activities, frequency, etc. as well as satisfaction and points of concern; but the results aren’t all compiled yet, much less public.
Over several meetings there had been talk about what combination of ways might make for better feedback on trail conditions, problems and grooming. These potentially involved key user groups and “fast feedback loops.” We had blue-sky discussions on technology and crowdsourcing as well as more here-and-now talk about the existing chain of reporting and sometimes misinformation or out-dated information that may get out on trail conditions. Where exactly all this goes is yet to be seen, but two or three of the components hold out some hope.
- The NCC will ensure that all its communications channels have consistent information; whether that’s parking lot attendants or visitor centre staff, whether that’s conditions updates, or no snowshoeing on the ski trails, or whatever.
- Informal networking on user feedback about trails has already improved among members of the Roundtable. We hope for more of this.
- The entire NCC website is heading for a complete refresh and the trail conditions reporting area is recognized as an important place for improvements. We encouraged both the ability for user input and a keep-it-simple approach.
That last paragraph sounds like I’m speaking for the whole Roundtable and I’m not; not there nor anywhere else. I’m just calling ‘em as I saw ‘em.
The cards that GuideGatineau has begun distributing to promote the website are considered to be highly environmentally responsible due to the fact that the paper used is 100% recycled and is produced using energy from biofuels plus the ink is vegetable based.