Bragg Creek recognized as "Historicaly Significant"

On January 17, 2012 national news organizations reported that Bragg Creek has been designated a "Historically Significant Place in Canada" due to it being the location of the first Youth Hostel in Canada. The hostel, opened in July 1933, was the work of Mary and Catherine Barclay who wanted "to enable youth to find wholesome companionship ... travelling inexpensively, and acquiring a knowledge of their neighbour's land and customs...”

There are 60 National Historic Sites in Alberta. Fort Calgary and Banff Springs Hotel are among them.

Read the press release announcing the designation

Read about the youth hostel

Sustain Kananaskis

Visit sustaink.ca

A new initiative is underway to put an end to commercial logging in Kananaskis.

Spray Lake Sawmills is planning to clear cut over 700 hectares of trees in the West Bragg Creek area of Kananaskis Country.

That can be measured as:

• 1,700 acres
• 7 square kilometers
• 7 million square meters - that’s enough space to easily fit 7 million people!
• 1,300 football fields

Logging is planned to start this summer (2012) and is expected to take about 9 months to complete.

These logging cut blocks will be located directly next to or surrounding at least 25 kms of recreational ski, cycling, equestrian, hiking and snowshoeing trails.

Horse-drawn sleigh rides are the ultimate Canadian winter activity

The foothills of Alberta are a great place to enjoy outdoor activities. They are relatively accessible; not far from Calgary and the terrain is a lot easier to navigate than the alpine region in the Rockies. Lay down a layer of snow and they are the perfect winter playground. Add some horses and you've got the ultimate western Canadian experience. Check out this short video of a horse-drawn sleigh ride on the Anchor D Ranch just west of Turner Valley.

Change in the wind and on the web

As winter settles in, we're making a few changes here at braggcreek.ca. You may not notice a difference, but we've moved to a new server. That is providing an opportunity to bring things up to date and make a few adjustments.

One of the changes is a new photo gallery system. Thanks to the good folks at Piwigo who have provided the PHP application that operates the gallery we now have a new interface for the gallery. Please feel free to rate the images and to comment on them.

Another big change is the reopening of the Bragg Creek Bulletin Board. It was never a big hit, but I always thought it provided an important line of communication for the community. If you're tired of all the noise on Facebook, come on home to Bragg Creek and share your news. These boards are a real challenge to operate as they are swarmed by spammers selling sex, drugs but no rock and roll so far. They forced me to close it down a while ago, but I'm going to give it another try. So long as there is enough meaningful conversation to warrant beating back the spammers I'll keep it open. But, I'm sorry to say, "use it or loose it".

The weather page keeps on ticking. The weather page, with a photo of the current conditions on Moose Mountain, just keeps on going. I've had messages from scientists and outdoor enthusiasts as well as locals who use the image regularly to plan their activities, monitor the conditions or just plan their commute home to the foothills. The technology is a bit complicated and it does crash from time to time, but I try to keep it up-to-date if for no other reason than to satisfy the 24/7 demands of http://webcams.travel who feature the page here.

Finally, the Bragg Creek Store is gone. I've tried every which way to earn a living from this site, including an online store. Nothing works, including selling Kananaskis branded merchandise through my web store. So I shut it down. If you want to get a unique gift for Christmas call 403-949-4274 for more info. We've got the Bragg Creek licence plate, fleece apparel and a great day pack. The big gaudy ads that appear on every page provide a $100 Google check every couple of months or so please feel free to click on them.

I apologize in advance for links that don't work and information that is out of date. There is an awful lot of information and entertainment on this site and I'm doing my best to keep it relevant. If you find something you think needs fixing please send me an email.

Motorized Vehicles are now appear to be allowed to enter the Crystal Line Trail

A couple of years ago I published a photo of the barricade blocking access the the Crystal Line trail just past the cattle guard inside the entrance to the West Bragg Creek. It is difficult to see, but there are tire tracks on the trail side of the " No Motorized Vehicles" sign. I guess the Sustainable Resource Development people recognized that it was hypocritical to say that the owners of the land, the people of Alberta, were breaking the law if they drove on the trail, while they themselves, Spray Lakes Sawmills and any contractors hired by them were allowed to drive on the trail. So they took the sign down. Spray Lakes has now flagged the trees bordering the trail to be cut down under their "Forest Management Agreement" with Sustainable Resource Development. They have also flagged trails near the Moose Loop trail. Large scale commercial logging is about to begin on the recreation trails in West Bragg Creek just as they have done in MacLean Creek and in Sibbald near Barrrier Lake on the Old Baldy trail (see savekananaskis.ca). You can expect logging trucks, feller-bunchers, skidders, bulldozers, pickups and all manner of heavy equipment to be operating on and near the recreation trails in the next few years.

West Bragg Creek Trails Update

• As of October 23, 2011, 37 km's of trails are cleared and The Greater Bragg Creek Trails Association expect to have 43 km cleared by the middle of November.
• 26 km of tread has been built using a combination of volunteers, paid labourers and 2 contract mini excavators.  The balance will be completed next summer.
• Ranger Creek and Loggers loop bridges are complete.
• Sign posts, map signs, trail markers and parking lot signs are to be completed by June 2012.
• Total confirmed funding is $240,000.
• Trail name approvals were recently obtained from Alberta Tourism, Parks and Recreation.

New book on Moose Mountain

Moose Mountain, Alberta

Exploring the Natural History of Can

yon Creek and Area

By Dan Quinsey

The upper and Lower Foothill regions of southwest Alberta are home not only to some of the most interesting species in the province, they also contain within them evidence of ancient times.

Aside from the descriptions of florae and fauna, this complex guidebook offers amateur and professional naturalists an opportunity to explore the Carboniferous and Jurassic formations along Canyon Creek, Moose Mountain where many geological and palaeontologists wonders await to be experienced and discovered.

Visit the web site here

Finding information about Kananaskis

Finding stuff on the government's web site is like shooting a moving target, so you should check this out now before they move it. Here is a page of all the publications about Kananaskis; maps, posters, brochures, CD-Roms, digital downloads and booklets. There is a lot of great info available.

Kananaskis publications

Life comes back to the land in June

This one seemed longer than others, but our winters are always too long. They only release their grip in June when we can plant annual flowers and put away the snow tires. Then the deer and moose appear with their newborn on display and the wildflowers blaze across the landscape. It rains a lot and with the addition of the snowmelt rivers and creeks fill to the point of flooding and traditionally the shopping centre parking lot turns into a small pond. This is life in the foothills of the Rockies, here captured on video. The moose calf is about 4 to 6 weeks old. The bird's wing is from a Clark's Nutcracker.

Commuting to Calgary?

Check out the Bragg Creek bulletin board

Please contact this web site or call 403-949-4274. Want to join a commuter car group with over 300,000 km under its wheels? You drive one day a week and get to sleep the other four. It is that simple. Meet in the hamlet about 6:30, one person drives and covers the cost of the car and parking, while the others get to ride for free. Return about 4:30. Want to catch up on the local gossip? They've got it all.

Building Trails in West Bragg Creek

Help the Greater Bragg Creek Trails Association complete the WBCASTP and build trails this summer.
They're looking for volunteers.
They meet in the West Bragg Creek Parking Lot, west end at 9:45 AM and are done by 3 PM.
Please email this web site if you have any questions.

See "What to bring/What to expect".

In future weeks, where the weather threatens to cancel the trail building, they will endeavour to send out an email notice of cancellation no later than 8:30AM to avoid any wasted trips from Calgary. Thanks to all for your patience as we try to communicate to a large group as efficiently as possible.

The GBCTA will be doing a draw for a wine basket donated by Spirits West in Bragg Creek at the end of June, for all those people who volunteer in June.

Help the GBCTA earn $25,000 at Shell's Fuelling Change project:

http://www.fuellingchange.com/main/project/19/West-Bragg-Creek-All-Season-Trail-Plan-Implementation?org-tab-overview

View more Bragg Creek videos

West Bragg Creek trails marked for clearcut

In 2003 I went to a workshop sponsored by Spray Lakes Sawmills of Cochrane. They announced their intention to conduct commercial logging in Kananaskis under the Forest Management Agreement they were awarded by the Alberta Government Ministry of Sustainable Resource Development in 2001. Since then I’ve tried to stop the logging, working with the Bragg Creek Environmental Coalition and many Bragg Creek and Calgary residents, in particular Alvise and Paola who helped run the Tag-A-Tree campaign. In that 2006 campaign we made 7,000 wooden “tags”, marked with our “Save Kananaskis – It’s worth it” message. People hung them on their property and around the area.

Over the years thousands of heartfelt appeals to Save Kananaskis have been delivered to the government through letters, brochures, posters, petitions, rallies, web sites, media campaigns, public meetings, exhibit booths at festivals and events. We tried everything we could think of, we had a lot of supporters and we were very successful getting the message out, building awareness and winning converts.

Right in the middle of that, Ted Morton, then Minister of Sustainable Resource Development, approved the Spray Lakes Sawmills, Detailed Forest Management Plan. The loggers moved into the Sibbald Area, near Barrier Lake and clearcut large tracts of forest claiming that they were practicing good forest management while controlling the pine beetle. Turns out the beetle had very limited impact. The scientists who were advising us said the bugs wouldn't kill more than 30% of the Kananaskis forest. It looks like it they won't kill more than three percent. SRD used unwarranted alarmist tactics and their power over the media to instill panic in people declaring a “State of Emergency” with respect to the bug. Under the onslaught of misinformation, even well-informed people accepted the supposed need to log Kananaskis. Shame on the government for using scare tactics to intimidate people. Shame on the government for not listening to its citizens.

Our Save Kananaskis campaign foundered when, in 2008, the provincial government won a very strong mandate to proceed with their assault on the environment.

Now, in 2010, the loggers have marked the forest along the Crystal Line trail in the West Bragg Creek Recreation Area and our highly valued natural area is about to be turned into a clearcut. Now that they can't use the pine beetle to justify their commercial logging operation, they claim the threat of forest fire makes logging in Kananaskis OK. It's not OK. It will have negative economic, social and environmental impacts on Bragg Creek and the thousands of people who recreate in the most popular recreation area in the province – the one located ½-an-hour from Calgary, a city of 1-million people. The worst of it is that those people depend on this watershed for their water supply. The scientists say logging has a negative impact on the quality and quantity of water. We should listen to them this time.

See a map of the West Bragg Creek trails

More information on Logging in Kananaskis

Visit the Save Kananaskis web site

Visit the Tag-A-Tree web site

Moose drops by for lunch

It's late October. Most of the leaves have fallen and it's slim pickings for the moose and deer. I noticed some movement through the patio door and the dog started barking frantically. There, a few feet from my window was a moose - on my deck - happily munching on the leaves of the mountain ash tree that grows through the deck.

Moose on the deck

Bragg Creek

Your guide to a full-of-fun destination in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains near Calgary and Banff. Drive the Cowboy Trail to Kananaskis and outdoor adventure. Explore the horseback, biking, and hiking trails. Enjoy a day in the country, unique shopping, fine dining and accommodation.

Kananaskis

Information on facilities and attractions in this 4,000 square kilometre recreational playground. Explore the Elbow valley. You can access the trails, rivers, ponds and mountains along highway 66 and in West Bragg Creek. You'll find picnic areas interpretive trails and campsites.

Activities

Outdoor adventure awaits on the trails and recreation areas around us. Catch some culture in the Bragg Creek Centre. Share the fun at our annual events. Your guide to the trails, events and activities in Kananaskis.