West Tin Hat Trail now open

Craig and Doug are standing at Haslam Vista. Below you see Haslam Lake and beyond there Texada Island and Vancouver Island in the haze on the distant horizon.

We cleaned out the upper half of the West Tin Hat trail section from KM 85 to KM 88 on Sunday, May 2, and with that the whole of the West Tin Hat trail is now open with all of winter's deadfalls bucked out with the chainsaw and removed. 

There is now only one short stretch of blowdown between Sarah Point at KM 0 to Tin Hat Mountain Hut at about KM 90. It is located just south of Confederation Hut where another tangle of blown down trees impedes easy hiking. We will take care of this remote spot in the coming days.

Many sections southward from Tin Hat Hut are already cleared. However, some that had been in the snow zone - and a couple still are covered by snow in the Smith Range and on the back of Mount Troubridge - need to receive the annual deadfall clearance treatment. So far this has meant many hundreds of trees across the trail, and likely means that a similar number needs to be bucked on points south. 

Please report any blowdown you encounter so we, the volunteers that keep the trail open, can get to that as quickly as our schedule allows. Thank you. And just in case you didn't know, no one is getting paid a penny. It's all volunteer work. We do get some donations that are for gas money, and a fund for building materials for another hut we are planning to build later this year or next. Today we are driving up to begin clearing East Tin Hat Ridge. I will report conditions on that side of the mountain soon. 

Further, the road/trail shortcut down from Tin Hat toward Powell River is closed for the summer and perhaps even fall due to harvesting activities. Hikers will have alternate access to the hut on Tin Hat via the East Tin Hat Ridge Trail, which we are hoping to open fully by the end of this week.