Goat creek is hazardous for biking

 – The small bridge at 4.4K on the Goat creek trail has been seriously damaged –

Update Jul 11, 2013: “Parks Canada also plans to repair several trails and bridges, including the Sundance Canyon Loop, Marsh Loop, Cascade Valley and the Spray-River/Goat Creek trail to Spray Road in Canmore. Read more Parks setting priorities for flood remediation.

At the Goat creek trailhead, there is a warning/closure sign indicating the Spray river bridge at 9K is washed out. At the Banff trailhead for Spray river west, you’ll see the same warning sign. This would almost lead one to believe the rest of the trail is okay, but that’s far from accurate.

The Goat creek trail at 4.4K has a hazardous, steep drop-off and a damaged bridge

Starting from the Goat creek trailhead, there is a small washout of the trail at 800 metres which can still be crossed quite easily on foot or on bike. At 2.6K there’s a deeper trail washout which you could walk your bike across. At this location there is lots of gravel on the trail for a 40-metre distance.

Sign at the Goat creek trailhead indicates the Spray river bridge is washed out

At 4.4k, the small wooden bridge has been washed out, and if you weren’t paying attention, you’d ride over a vertical drop onto rocks which has the potential to do serious injury. That’s as far as I ventured. Hauling my bike across looked possible, but it would be easy to twist an ankle or have some other mishap. The stream banks crumble beneath your feet. The stream channel is 5 – 10 metres wider than it was before the floods.

Swix, eh? This hiker makes me wonder if we’ll be skiing on Goat creek this winter.

I was informed by two other bikers who went further that one more of the small wooden bridges was washed out, but the Goat creek bridge at 7K was still intact. The Spray river bridge was only replaced 19 months ago and is already gone.

Spray river west: This comment was posted on Bikepirate.com. “Rode this yesterday (July 3) from the Banff Springs side. There are two major wash-outs where 6 ft and 10 ft gullies have appeared through the track. It’s a little tricky but you can carry your bike around the top of them. There’s also some rock slides further on which you may have to walk across.

The SP6 bridge is totally gone, so you can’t cross the river at the end of the loop and will have to come back the same way. I would recommend holding off riding this one until it has been fixed up.”

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