Adventure tourism is defined as travel that involves two of three elements: connection with nature, interaction with culture and physical activity.
The global adventure travel sector is estimated to be worth $263 billion U.S. and $82 billion for gear, apparel and accessories (Adventure Tourism Market Survey, George Washington University).
Adventure Tourism takes environmentally and culturally aware travelers, guided or unguided, into more remote places on the planet where they can experience being physically active in nature and interacting with unique cultures.
The Okanagan-Similkameen is on the adventure tourism radar, offering cultural interaction — Mascot Mine and winery tours, the Kettle Valley Steam Railway and special aboriginal events, to name a few.
Our natural scenic landscape is also a big draw where travelers test physical endurance with water sport, biking and hiking. The valley is a treasure chest of adventure tourism gold. Gold that is being mined by the tourism industry and its adjunct industries and gold that keeps our local economy buoyant and growing. Our spring, summer and fall months are busy with valley visitors, their presence is visible.
But what about winter and cold weather adventure tourism?
The alpine is where that happens. Resorts offer downhill and cross country skiing, snow shoeing, skating, tobogganing and snowmobiling. Sometimes just being in the mountains as an observer is enough. Clouds skidding by on high altitude currents, wind and snow blizzards stinging the skin, sun highlighting snow diamonds, the quiet interrupted occasionally by squirrel and bird calls. The brilliant stars and planets low overhead in skies unlit by artificial light. Then there is the pine, hemlock and fir trees dense in their sentinel stands, guarding moose, deer, cougar and burrowing small mammals, overseeing the winding trails below their branches. When the snow melts and the alpine flowers bloom, recreation still thrives offering myriad hours of exhilarating mountain exploration.
Our local alpine forest is at Apex Mountain Resort and Nickel Plate Nordic Centre. This forest is in great peril at present with clear-cut logging having gone on all winter during this ski season, a situation that has not occurred before, with loaded trucks barreling down Apex Mountain Road being a very real safety hazard to mountain visitors.
Twenty per cent of the Nickel Plate Lake area has been clear cut and another 20 per cent to be done in the next seven years. Clear cutting has been done on Green Mountain and is visible from Apex Mountain Resort, a hectare wide barren swath that has yet to be replanted after three years since the trees were taken.
Further slated logging includes the heart of the Nickel Plate Nordic Centre, eliminating a number of cross country and snowshoe trails altogether. With roads already in place giving easy access to the forest, no regulations by government on industry logging practises, no desire by government or industry to preserve alpine recreation and the environment, clear cutting is the method of choice for quick and easy profit rather than scheduled, sustainable, selective harvesting practises.
What is detrimental to the alpine ecosystem filters down to the valley ecosystem with detrimental results as well.
This logging is not an alpine issue, it is a South Okanagan issue. Certainly valley tourism and its spin-offs lose and in the alpine, outdoor recreationists and the singular culture they create lose, the environment loses and property owners lose with resultant property value declines.
The Apex Property Owners Association is holding an information meeting in the Day Lodge in Apex Mountain Village on Feb. 28 at 4 p.m. A well-researched presentation on logging in the alpine will be presented by the APOA Forestry Committee followed by an Q and A.
Learn who is logging, the full extent of what is planned, the wide-ranging repercussions to alpine and Okanagan environments and what we can do about it.
A groundswell of public support is needed to stop the clear cutting of this most delicate recreational ecosystem that requires a 100-year lifecycle to maintain its health.
Please join us in our intention to stop clear-cut logging and its devastating impact on us all.
Julia Valenti
President, Apex Property Owners Association