The FMCBC Recreation and Conservation Committee is preparing a response to the Lands Branch regarding a proposed heli-ski tenure near Mount Waddington. In the past, the FMCBC has advocated for no helicopter access for day-use commercial or private backcountry recreation. In 2009, the FMCBC successfully negotiated a joint-use agreement with one such commercial heli-sports proponent, which kept Mt Waddington and surrounding terrain “non-motorized with restricted aerial access”. This unofficial designation or map notation from a previous LRMP has allowed for non-motorized recreation with limited aerial access to drop-off or pick-up people and their food and equipment for multi-day, non-motorized recreational trips. Although the proponent surrendered their tenure in 2012, we recently learnt that the Crown agency, which reviews and approves commercial recreation tenures, has maintained the land use notation because of the significance of the Mt. Waddington area and the potential to become a protected area. The Lands Branch is considering formalizing the “non-motorized with restricted aerial access” land use designation for the Mt. Waddington area and has invited the Federation of Mountain Clubs and other stakeholders to recommend boundaries for the non-motorized zones, pending potential creation of protected areas.
The idea of a park in the Waddington area has been suggested for many decades by the outdoor community. In 1989, the Alpine Club Vancouver Section submitted a proposal to the then Ministry of Forests requesting that a Wilderness Area be designated. No action was taken at that time and during the Protected Area Strategy process in the late 1990s, Mount Waddington was not included since environmental groups were more interested in protecting old growth in the valleys.
There is still no national park within our Coast Range. With Canada considering increasing protected areas to 25% by 2025 and 30% by 2030 from a current 12.1%, these wilderness areas would be prime candidates as national parks.
John Baldwin, an honourary member of the Alpine Club (and past member of the VOC) has prepared a proposal for a park in the Waddington area and the Homathko Icefield. We encourage everyone to review John Baldwin’s proposal and to support this initiative.
The Committee believes it is time to formalize the “non-motorized with restricted aerial access” land use designation for the Mt. Waddington area, as well as for the Homathko Icefield, to preserve these remote and heavily glaciated landscapes from development and commercial day-use recreation and to allow for future consideration as protected areas. Subject to any further input about the proposed boundaries and the park proposals, the FMCBC will be submitting recommendations to BC Lands that are consistent with the boundaries for the non-motorized land use designations and protected areas as outlined by John Baldwin. If you want to see the detailed maps we can send you the Google Earth KML files.
We invite feedback on the proposed boundaries and the efforts to create a park in the Waddington area and in the Homathko Icefield.
FMCBC Contacts:
I fully support the creation of a national park enclosing the Mount Waddington area, and specifically the creation of non motorized areas within the park boundary. Heli-sport should be forbidden within the boundary: It’s ecologically disruptive and completely unnecessary.
Hi Jay,
My brother Mikee Ramsden and Grant McCormack landed on the glacier in the 70’s and my brother summited Mt Waddington. However, Grant suffered a beoken leg when their plane got caught in some turbulence and slammed into the glacier when they were doing a mid mountain supply drop. , The plane bounced off the glacier and then landed to offload the other passengers.
We’ll post the newsletter. Cheers, Patrick
I think a new park is a good idea. Go for it!
Judy Pasemko I fully support the creation of a National Park surrounding Mt. Waddington .I support the FMBC FMCBC submitting recommendations to BC Lands that are consistent with the boundaries for the non-motorized land use designations and protected areas as outlined by John Baldwin.
Yes
As a member of the Chilliwack Outdoor Club and the Federation of Mountain Clubs of British Columbia, I fully support the creation of a national park that would include Mt. Waddington, and the Homathko Icefields as outlined by John Baldwin.
This magnificent area needs to be protected for all time as a National Park.
I also fully support the FMBC submitting recommendations to BC Lands in support of this as outlined by John Baldwin.
There has been a desperate need for decades for the Waddington-Homathko Icefield area to be a designated park–such a bounty, such a beauty and such a delight needs to be protected. Baldwin’s proposal is wise, sane and embodies a vision more than worth the heeding and responding to.
Montani Semper Liberi
Ron Dart
.
Great proposal by John. Fully support this initiative. Happy to help anyway I can, including money or contacts with the BC government (esp Ministers’ offices).
Having been to both areas, I disagree with the proposal. Parks designation brings layers of bureaucracy, fees, limitations and potentially deeply compromises access. Neither area is exactly crawling with people. The nature of the terrain protects itself from resource extraction. I think the Wad and Homathko are best kept wild – not hamstrung by decision makers who’ll never feel the urge to visit either place.
One of the crowning glories of the Waddington Range, which it shares with much of the Coast Mountains, is its utter freedom. You go where you want, when you want, with whom you want, to climb whatever you want. The imposition of any level of bureaucracy onto the area would destroy that freedom. And once freedom is lost, it is almost never restored. So, while I fully agree that heliskiing operations make poor neighbours for ski touring parties, I urge the FMCBC and its members to restrict their proposal to that specific issue, and that alone. The ACC proposal from 1989 would have restricted air access to only a few sites. The FMCBC Rec and Con committee response to the heliskiing tenure application in 2007-8-9 would have banned aerial daytrips into the Range, year round. Why? There is no conflict to a couple celebrating their anniversary by heli-picknicing with a bottle of champagne in the Waddington Combatant Col (which has happened; and kudos to them for their boldness), if you happen to be on the Bravo Glacier route the same day. There is no reason to ban extreme skiers from Whistler from flying in to challenge themselves with big, steep, dangerous descents – which happens rarely, but which I’m sure is as big news in their community as a new face being climbed is big news in ours. Such restrictions, if applied to the whole area proposed by John Baldwin, would have prevented Phyllis Munday, late in her life, from enjoying a lunch in the middle of the Homathko Icefields before doing a flight-seeing trip around Waddington. Such restrictions should be anathema to any ambitious mountaineer, not to mention any fair-minded user of the outdoors. Who are we to value ‘our’ activities so highly that we would restrict others from their enjoyment. Who are we so say that it’s OK for me to fly into this great range for two weeks, or a week, or a weekend, but that you, my friend, cannot do so because you want to do so only for one day, or a couple hours. That is indefensibly parochial and selfish. And to think that a park, whether provincial or national, would serve only, or even chiefly, the interests of its principle current users, i.e., mountaineers and ski-mountaineers, (in other words, us), is naive in the extreme. Land managers, of whatever stripe, manage land. They have their own priorities, their own interests, and their own perspectives. Management always means rules, and rules change, over time, and subject to political whim and economic currents. The only rule which protects the current wonderful ‘freedom of the hills’ in the Waddington Range is no rule at all! So, think again, all of you who reflexively say ‘yes’ to what seems like a reasonable means of protecting a very special, highly unique environment. If we wish to continue to enjoy our recreation to its fullest extent, any and all proposals which restrict that ability ought to be resisted with all the energy we can muster.