Lions Bay hiking trails closed due to fire risk
Posted August 25, 2023 12:15 pm.
Lions Bay trails are closed until further notice due to ongoing wildfire risk, the Village of Lions Bay says.
The local government has shut down visitor parking and trail access due to the extreme risk of wildfires in the backcountry above the area.
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“We must unfortunately take this temporary measure to reduce the risk of a human-caused wildfire,” the village said in a news release. “Unlike other communities such as Kelowna and Yellowknife where fires started kilometres away, a fire on trails could be only hundreds of metres away from homes.”
If a fire did start, it could strand hikers on trails and threaten the local water supply, the village said, adding that it doesn’t have access to enough water to fight a fire.
Jaime Cunliffe, the acting mayor of Lions Bay, tells CityNews that the village is not connected to the water systems in Metro Vancouver.
“We have our own watershed and our own water system and we are teetering on level three water restrictions anyways,” she said. “We would not have the kind of water flow to actually be able to fight a fire for an extended period of time, and if there was a fire that was to occur in our watershed, it would absolutely devastate our community.”
Cunliffe says the decision to close the trails was not taken lightly.
“We look forward to welcoming hikers back when conditions are safe for everybody, after we get some much-needed rain,” she said. “We wanted to get the message out so that hikers don’t drive all the way here only to find they can’t go hiking.”
Lions Bay didn’t give a timeline for when the trails will be back open, saying only that fire conditions will have to improve before a decision is made.
– With files from Cole Schisler and Martin MacMahon
