Malcolm Park
I'm sitting at the Whiskey Creek Store one day about a year ago, eating an ice cream cone and watching tourists and I see 3 forest service trucks pull out of the back parking lot. They're loaded with pulaskis & chainsaws. Huh! Me too. I wonder what they're up to.
The manager of the store tells me "There's some sort of park back there". Really? There wasn't one there a month ago.
After a little checking around it turns out that the Malcolm family has given 40 acres of land to the provincial government. The land is completely surrounded by private property and there is no access to it. The provincial government in turn, gave it to the Regional District of Nanaimo for a regional park, they gave it to the Area F Parks Committee for a community park. With no way to get to it, nobody knew what to do with it.
So, off I go to the Area F Parks Committee.
" Can I build trails in there? The only kind I know how to build are mountain bike trails. They're pretty good for hiking too."
They tell me there's no access and they are going to lose the land if there isn't some sort of improvement to it. They invited the forest service crews to cut a bunch of deadfall as a training exercise.
"Sure, if you can get access, go ahead, build trails. There are a couple of proposed routes already flagged. You can't use any gas powered equipment in there."
"I'll see what I can do."
So now there is a nice little 40 acre park with access from the back parking lot of the Whiskey Creek Store (through a road allowance). There is a hill in the middle of the property about 100metres high. Now there are about 5-6 km of trail rideable in 2 directions. I call that a 10km ride. I don't claim it as a 10km build though.