Cancourse Plan in Motion

The Cancourse Plan is now in motion! Over the past few days, approximately twenty volunteers affiliated with (at least) Lake City Trail Alliance, Trail Maniacs, Coeur d’Alene Bike Co., and Vertical Earth installed fence line along the Cancourse/USFS boundary in preparation for establishing a hiking/bicycling recreation area on a strip of Canfield Mountain between CdA city limits and USFS land.

Where’s the T-post?

Please help get the word out regarding the motivation for our work. We scrambled to get this done before winter sets in, but in the meanwhile there has been little time to communicate with the general community about what’s going on. While installing the fence several of us chatted with numerous hikers and bicyclists who were alarmed, concerned that trail access might be cut off to them. In fact, we’re laying the groundwork to make the Cancourse a planned hiking/bicycling recreation area, but we first need to start rehabilitating severe erosion problems that are due to a combination of ad hoc trail creation and motorcycle hill climbing. To that end, the fence will help alert motorcyclists where the boundary is, so that they can instead use the established Canfield Mountain Trail System. We plan to build new alternate/better trails and retire hopeless erosion cases. In the longer term we will develop the full potential of the Cancourse with regard to our trail network, not to mention tree/forb/grass planting and long-term forest management.