Canada

Now There’s A Transit Trekking Resource Page

Photo of one of my filing bins with brown file folders labeled with various Washington state regions.
Not shown: a lot of stuff that belongs filed in these folders.

I’ve found some jewels that make identifying transit-accessible hiking and other outdoor exploration around the U.S. much easier and compiled them in this resource page. It lives in the main site navigation but I thought I should highlight here.

For now, it’s super simple, in an alpha list by state. Canada welcome, too — I know B.C. transit-accessible outdoor opportunity abounds just north of me here in Seattle.

Every time I update the resource page to add a new find, I also update a corresponding spreadsheet in hopes of someday creating a simple search tool on here.

In the meantime, if you know of a comprehensive resource for your region, be it city, state, county, or province, let me know using the contact form and I’ll add it. Generally I am looking to add resources that provide many options versus a single long trail, although I’ve made some initial exceptions to that in this early stage. For example, I included Boston’s Walking City Trail because I don’t know of other resources in that area (a major city in New England) and it’s a pretty long trail, and included the SF Crosstown Trail because it connects to a ton (a full ton! I weighed them) of other regional trails.

If you’re aware of a central source of transit hiking/trekking/transit to trails info that the resource page aspires to be, I’d love to know about it. Get in touch.

A snowy meadow in the Canadian Rockies. In the fore ground a few short stubby snow-covered trees surround a much taller leafless tree that has large clumps of snow tucked where leafless limbs meet the main trunk. In the background a coniferous forest sits and beyond that, some snow covered peaks jut up on from the right. The sky is bright white from the right corner, softening into cloudy white and gray streaks.

What is K-Country? And when will public transit arrive there?

TIL I learned that K-Country is short for Kananaskis Country. “The Stoney-Nakoda, Siksika, Blood, and Kootenai First Nations all have deep connection to this land,” according to Alberta Parks, one of the land managers of what is currently a popular outdoor recreation area in the Canadian Rockies about 60 miles west of Calgary.

The various governmental jurisdictions in the region are preparing for a feasibility study for launching public transit to the area, per reporting by Jessica Lee, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter at Rocky Mountain Outlook.

As with many other transit expansions to wilderness destinations, the tentative plans have largely been prompted by traffic woes. (More on this common theme in a later post, perhaps.) The linked article mentions mobility for nearby residents; I’m glad to see that recognized. But the specific options mentioned are all seasonal, which wouldn’t do much for residents’ mobility in the winter. It’s early days since the various players are queuing up an initial study, but since there appears to be quite a lot of winter recreation in K-Country, it seems to me that year-round public transit could serve mobility needs for residents in the region, offering nondrivers better outdoor recreation access, and offering others who would prefer to leave their cars at home the option to tread much lighter.

A dramatic scene from the Canadian Rockies. A blue sky filled with dumpling puffs of clouds dominates distant mountain tops that are also reflected in the water of a large lake at their base, interrupted by a coniferous forest in the distance that bisects the image horizontally.
Somewhere in Kananaskis Country, Alberta, Canada.
Copyright 2009 Minniemousaunt. Used with permission under limited Creative Commons license.

Top image: “Snow balls,” somewhere in Kananaskis Country, Alberta, Canada. Copyright 2019 Edna Winti. Used with permission under limited Creative Commons license.