Visitors to Dakota Ridge must put chains on their vehicles or risk ending up in a ditch, blocking the road or worse, causing a serious accident.
It’s happened a handful of times since the cross-country skiing destination opened last month – vehicles make it up the hill without chains but on the way down the vehicles slip and slide and careen into snow-filled ditches, sometimes blocking the road, which is the only access to and from the ridge.
Assistant parks superintendent Michel Frenette said the most serious incident so far this season happened on Dec. 26 when someone going down the road without chains lost control of his vehicle, which ultimately slid to a stop, blocking the roadway.
“There were about 10 people or so who had to be ferried back to other vehicles with chains and taken back to the pavement,” Frenette said, noting the stranded ridge users had to leave their vehicles up the mountain to retrieve another day.
“There were some quads that ferried them down to where we were with the trucks and then we took them to the pavement where they had arranged rides.”
The forest service road leading to Dakota Ridge (which starts at the end of Field Road in Wilson Creek) is about 12 km long and it’s narrow with steep shoulders, making it hard to get around vehicles that even partially block access.
The road is well maintained and ploughed each day when three centimetres or more of snow has fallen, Frenette said. “It’s not a road condition issue, it’s a driver issue,” he said.
“Put the chains on all the time and that way you’re guaranteed that it’s not going to be a problem. People who go up without chains, they take a gamble.”
Dakota Ridge saw a lot of use over the Christmas break with upwards of 300 people accessing the ridge each day. Now the numbers have dropped significantly during weekdays, but weekends are still busy with about 200 people making the trek to Dakota Ridge last weekend, for example.
Road conditions are posted each morning by about 9:30 a.m. on the Dakota Ridge Facebook page where people without vehicles or chains also post requests to carpool up the mountain.
Learn more about Dakota Ridge at www.SCRD.ca/Dakota-Ridge
