History of Lions Bay Trails (Part Three)

John Dudley breaks trails and brings sleepless nights

Rudy Luethy's memorial bench, designed and built by Andrew Wray. Photo by Andrew Wray.

This is the third and final installment (for now!) of long-time resident John Dudley's history of building trails in and around Lions Bay over the past three decades.

If you have an interest in lending a hand with this eternally on-going project, he dearly hopes you will reach out.

He shares his experiences in Part One HERE, in which Dudley lit a figurative fire under fellow team members way back in 1999, and again HERE, in which he talks about the crazy construction of Trudi's trail, and the lunacy of a bridge across Lonetree Creek.

And now we invite you to read his concluding episode, which involves a sky-high bench and a missing link...

History of the Lions Bay Trails, Part Three

by John Dudley

Over the years, I had often looked up at the bluffs as you turn the steep bend on Bayview Road above the school and thought there had to be a good view of the village from up there. With the help of Ken More, who loves to head off into the bush where there are no trails, we found a route and the Sleepless Nights Trail came into being.

Its name came about one day when one of our crew called me and said several of them were waking up in the night in a cold sweat dreading going up there to work again. (This was in a particularly steep section where people kept showering rocks on the heads of the people working down below.) So a couple of us went up and worked on this section until we reached a relatively safe area and coaxed them all back up again.

The Sleepless Nights Trail runs off Trudi's Trail, and because I love loop trails it has a Southern and Northern section.

Later on, because a lot of us hated the first steep bend on the Lions Trail, we built the Missing Link which hooks up to Trudi's Trail .

Ken's Bluffs were discovered by Ken More one day when he was out in his kayak and noticed that there had to be a good viewpoint from up there, realizing they must be just below the upper Erin Moore Trail. After we built a trail down from the Erin Moore Trail, Ken decided that we should be able to build a connecting trail linking up to the lower Erin Moore Trail. One day when we were up there, we took off bushwacking with Katherine Mueller to find a route.

After years of working on the trails with us, it was decided that Richard and Pat Grass should be mentioned somewhere on our trail system and the connecting trail became known as the Grass Grind.

On January 2, 2021 at 2 a.m., I woke up with the thought that it would be nice to build a trail that runs alongside one of the creeks in the village. After breakfast I hiked up to Rundle Creek, which is less than ten minutes away from where I live at the top of Oceanview Road, and started clearing away the undergrowth by the side of it.

Several friends joined me as we headed up the mountain and after a few months, the trail reached the Erin Moore Trail. With the sound of the creek always close by and the peacefulness of the surrounding forest I decided to name it the Sanctuary Trail.

Photo by Andrew Wray.

When Rudy Luethy, who had worked with me from the start of building the trail system, sadly died on Easter Sunday April 4, 2021 it was decided to build a memorial bench to him on the Erin Moore Trail.

He had often told me that when he died he would like his ashes to be spread beneath three giant fir trees that he had named the Three Sisters. Rudy had worked for Air Canada most of his life, so Andrew Wray came up with the ingenious idea of designing a bench resembling the first class section of a Boeing 747. When Rudy's ashes were spread, a group of us gathered around the bench as some of his ashes were scattered beneath the three great trees. (The rest of them were spread around the world, close to his favourite airports).

Andrew built two more conventional benches alongside Rundle Creek. And so people walking their dogs could have a quick half hour workout with their dogs, we built another trail branching off by the second bench, which came out near the top of the watershed road.

Because the trail was on the side of Unnecessary Mountain, the obvious name to call it was the Unnecessary Stroll. At the junction with the Sanctuary Trail, there is a beautiful poem by Cristina Viviani mounted by one of the benches Andrew built.

For a while now, Trudi has said, “Promise me John that you won't build any more trails, we have too many to maintain already.”

So I have agreed with her (after all, we have built 23 kilometres of them), however Ken has discovered another bluff and we may just go and have a peek at it sometime soon.

Ready to lend a hand as John carries on his trail-building adventures?

He can be reached at  jhdudley1@gmail.com

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