Outrage over the closure of Mount Seymour mountain biking trails growing by the day: reports

Last week, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation—one of multiple landowners at Mount Seymour— erected at least 25 no-trespassing signs. Those signs are now keeping mountain bikers, hikers and dog walkers off of 644 acres on the mountain’s lower slopes, the Vancouver Sun has reported.

And as the Sun reported, that decision has an increasingly heated legacy: a growing angry response, with the paper saying that “the Gore-Tex gloves are off” when it comes to the fight for those world-class trails.

Everyone from mountain bikers to runners to dog walkers are, to use the Sun’s words, “flabbergasted” by the decision to close off the trails. Despite that, though, the CMHC remains tight-lipped about the rationale behind the trail closures, addressing the public’s “surprise” by vaguely citing safety concerns.

Earlier this week, spokeswoman Karine LeBlanc suggested as much in her correspondence with Postmedia.

“At its core, this is a safety issue,” she told reporters, as published in the Vancouver Sun. “In our continuing role as co-owner and manager of the land, and in the interest of advising the community, these signs were installed as an immediate measure.”