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Callaghan park plan to go public

B.C. Parks planners have completed a draft management plan for the Callaghan Provincial Park and now it is the public’s turn for input. The draft goes on view Monday, Jan. 22 at 7 p.m. at the Myrtle Philip community centre.

B.C. Parks planners have completed a draft management plan for the Callaghan Provincial Park and now it is the public’s turn for input.

The draft goes on view Monday, Jan. 22 at 7 p.m. at the Myrtle Philip community centre. Other open houses will also likely be scheduled for Pemberton, Squamish and North Vancouver, said parks extension officer Vicki Haberl.

The next step will be to compile and review the public feedback and determine what changes should be made to the plan based on that input, said Haberl.

The plan then goes to Parks Management Committee, at a provincial level, for approval before it becomes a signed-off document. This could take several months.

A corridor that allows for snowmobile access through the park is likely to be the most contentious aspect of the management plan.

"We hope we have proposed an option for snowmobile access that is going to be acceptable to both sides of that debate," said Haberl.

"One of the key recommendations of the study team was that the plan allow for snowmobiling, but it has been restricted to a corridor through the park to provide access to the more extensive snowmobiling terrain beyond the park boundaries," said Haberl.

"We didn’t want to cut snowmobilers off from a traditional access route. We are just proposing that snowmobiling not occur throughout the park because that would, in effect, eliminate other recreational opportunities."

Any commercial operators in the park would still, however, need to apply for a park use permit.

The Callaghan Provincial Park was one of the 23 protected areas announced by the province in 1996 to complete the Protected Area Strategy for the Lower Mainland region. The area covers 2,667 hectares of old growth forests and provides excellent backcountry recreation opportunities within easy access from Whistler.

The road to a park designation for the Callaghan has, however, been rocky.

According to a report prepared by consultants Terra Firma for B.C. Parks, the Ministry of Environment and the Garibaldi-Sunshine Coast district, a Callaghan Lake park proposal was first developed by B.C. Parks in the early 1980s. It called for protection of a 10,000 hectare area, more than three times the size of the current park. And it came within a hair’s breadth of being sanctioned.

Draft plans for the 10,000 hectare park were submitted by the assistant deputy minister for designation as a recreation area for review by Cabinet in November, 1982.

Cabinet approval was granted for a Class A provincial park. A draft news release was prepared for the announcement in August, 1983. It needed only the signature of the Lieutenant Governor to become an Order-In-Council.

This never happened.

In 1992, an even larger 11,376 hectares was announced as a study area and candidate for protection under the Protected Areas Strategy with a recreation focus.

A study team was formed in 1993 that examined four options. "They ranged from leaving it as a wilderness area and doing nothing to it, to log it, pave it do whatever you want, with a couple of options in between," said Haberl.

The final team recommendations went to the Lower Mainland Inter-Agency Management Committee (IAMC) in late 1995. This was passed to the Lower Mainland Protected Areas Strategy Regional Public Advisory Committee which reduced the area to its present size and included it in the Lower Mainland PAS recommendation report.

It was officially designated as a park under the Park Act in 1997.

The Callaghan park’s primary "products" are easily accessible sub-alpine and alpine backcountry hiking, skiing, snowmobiling, camping and day-use recreation. The snowpack in the region is double that of similar elevations in Whistler.

Callaghan Lake is the key feature and is popular for trout fishing. It is the largest road-accessible sub-alpine lake in the Coast Range. The protected area includes very deep alpine cirques and lakes, rare stacked alpine and clustered pot-hole lakes, short "mares-tail" waterfalls emanating from hanging valleys and upland plateaus with hanging "swamps" resulting from inefficient drainage.

Part of the park falls into the Whistler Heli-skiing and Mad River Nordic skiing tenures.

B.C. Parks is also working on a management plan for the Brackendale Eagle Reserve, Baynes Island ecological reserve and Tantalus protected areas which were also part of the 1996 PAS announcement.

Haberl said those three areas are being handled in one plan. "They have some very different issues but also some very common issues."

She said the focus for Brackendale Eagles leans heavily toward conservation to protect eagle habitat. "There is no real recreational emphasis there. It is not an area where people traditionally go hiking. There is some fishing and there will be some issues around how much," said Haberl. "And also whether we permit rafting groups to land within the boundaries of the reserve."

The 10,040 hectare Tantalus park, on the other hand, is a premier mountaineering region. It does have some conservation needs but the focus is on recreation, noted Haberl. This park dominates the viewscape from the Sea to Sky Highway and includes spotted owl habitat. Commercial operators are lobbying to maintain air access in this difficult-to-access region. Mountain clubs, however would like to limit air access.

In all there are representatives of about 16 different stakeholder groups at the table for these three areas. They range from the Brackendale Eagles Reserve Society and the Squamish Estuary Conservation Society, to the Alpine Club of Canada, the Federation of Mountain Clubs and representatives of aircraft user groups.

Depending on how concerns are resolved at the table, a draft management plan that covers these three areas could be ready for public input next spring or early fall.