The nine-kilometre trail that runs from the Cameron Street Bridge, through Cottonwood Island Park, Lheidli T’enneh Memorial Park, Hudson’s Bay Wetland and finally to Carrie Jane Gray Park known collectively as the Heritage River Trail has seen better days.
The parts of the trail along the Fraser and Nechako rivers, especially the Nechako, are most affected by erosion.
Sections are blocked off by concrete dividers. Those who climb over are liable to run into areas where only narrow strips of trail are left, with the rest having crumbled and slid down to the water.
Trail users The Citizen spoke to expressed a desire for the pathways to be returned to their former glory, but representatives from the City of Prince George and Spruce City Wildlife Association said that protections for an endangered species of fish put major constraints on what work they’re able to do.
Jeremy Solloway said he spent many summers growing up in Prince George riding through Cottonwood Island Park and the surrounding trails.
Now in his 40s with his own kids, he still goes to the park but has avoids the western part of the trail system, where blocked-off sections mean users have to leave the trail to get by.
“The Cameron Street to Cottonwood (section) has that big section by the old Winton Global building that you have to go through the parking lot as a detour,” Solloway said.
“We have young children that are just starting their adventures on two wheels with no training wheels … but with that section, it’s difficult to pass. We started doing that with bike trailers when the kids were younger and you have to almost unload the kids and lift the trailer around the big cement block barricades. The loop in the park is just a much better alternative.”
He said that the ice jam on the rivers near Cottonwood Island Park and the subsequent spring runoff did a lot of the erosion damage, tearing out lookouts and benches. While the city has since replaced some of the wooden bridges that were destroyed, he said the rehabilitation work has progressed very slowly.
Going forward, he’d like to see the city be more proactive in shoring up the riverbanks and building the trails up again.
“It’s a crown jewel in Prince George,” he said. “We have so few and some of the ones we do have are heavily tarnished.”
Kyle Ross, a local cycling safety advocate and UNBC planning student, said that the last time he rode on the Heritage River Trail, it was treacherous.
“I remember one particular section of the trail, it had a sinkhole that basically had enveloped three-quarters of the trail, so you had to meander around it,” Ross said.
He said he’d love to use it more often, especially since it’s connected to a greater system of largely car-free trails.
“It’s quite a beautiful area to go through, so it should be quite the crown jewel,” Ross said. “We like to position ourselves in Prince George as a bit more of an outdoor town and having an outdoor area as beautiful as Cottonwood Island Park should be taken advantage of and treated quite well."
In 2024, the city replaced a section of paved trail with crushed gravel.
Currently, the city is working on updating its active transportation plan, which was most recently altered back in 2010. Until Aug. 1, the city ran an online survey soliciting feedback on the existing network and what changes or improvements residents would like to see.
Residents could click on a map of the city and pin comments for everyone to read.
For example, someone named Allan wrote “Currently the river trail is a mess with a variety of surface types, exposed roots, cracks and so on. It is not easily accessible or safely usable for the elderly, anyone using any form of mobility device, walkers or cyclists.”
Someone named Karl said “the section of the trail by the old Winton office needs to finally be rehabbed.”
Ross said he’d like to see more dedicated separated bicycle infrastructure, with bike lanes separated from vehicle lanes using plastic delineators, curbs or concrete barriers.
“Second thing is definitely looking after our existing trail network that runs through town like the Heritage Trail and Cottonwood Island Park,” he said.
Here are some other comments on the river trails The Citizen received after soliciting feedback in the Prince George Area Hiking Facebook group.
- Amber Armstrong: “I walk the trail from Cameron St. Bridge to Fort George Park pushing a stroller the only part that bothers us is the cement blocks as you are walking towards the old Winton office. There is really no detour to get around them with a stroller so it is sketchy maneuvering."
- Tasha Dawn: “As a newcomer to (Prince George), we have walked Cottonwood many times and really don't see the danger everyone is speaking about in these comments.”
- Jada Gratton: “Personally, I like the creation of the detours — I know you're not supposed to be walking on the eroded trails but I don't mind, it gives the bikers the nice trail, plus gives me options to walk my reactive dog further from others when they're passing on the main new trails.”
- Ashley V. Kelly: “I walked it in June with my family. It's getting dangerous, the detours help a bit. Honestly, I think the only option to keep it open would be looking into doing a retaining wall pretty much the entire length that is between Cameron Street and Cottonwood. There aren't enough trees to keep the erosion from happening because the trail runs between property fences and the river in lots of places. Another option would be hiring a civil engineer.”
- Erik Lang: “It's insane that much of the damage in Cottonwood happened during the massive ice jam in (I think) 2007. Several bridges were lost, trails along the edge started falling into the water and the City of PG did NOTHING. We eventually got the Cameron Street replacement bridge for a million dollars, which is beautiful, but I don't understand the sense of having such a centrepiece when they do nothing about the rest of the park. No riprap along the banks to prevent further erosion, no rebuilds of the smaller bridges, no new picnic tables. We went from so many trails to just a couple of main ones. It's embarrassing how badly this park has been treated by the city over the last 15 years.”
- Kris Lee: “I'm not sure if these are needed or not along the path. Or maybe they were once buried further and due to the erosion they have become more visible? The rebar sticking out almost a foot in some spaces so close to the walkways seems extremely dangerous and I always caution my daughter to stay very far away as a wrong slip can cause you to become impaled. Seems very dangerous on a hike that is suggested to be done in this town.”
- Sue Loedel: “Cottonwood Park before the ice jam damage was a true jewel in our city. I believe the Rotary clubs did or sponsored the first build of the park, there were lots of options for trail, a viewing platform overlooking the river with benches to sit and lots of smaller bridges crossing the slough. There has been no real maintenance or reconstruction of the park since the ice jam damage. The cottonwoods also need some care and a plan to preserve the wonderful carvings done by Elmer Gunderson. I don't believe there is and information in this park about the Island Cache either. The trails do not need to be paved, that only encourages the roots to grow and buckle the surface, a good hard packed surface is better for our ice snow and rain. It is a beautiful area in our city however like everything it is not being maintained or enhanced. Do not get me started about our boulevards, sidewalks full of weeds, etc.”
- Loretta Waring: “It is getting so dangerous… this should have been addressed 10 years ago.”
While the trail appears to have been left to decay, the reason behind the lack of work is more complicated than just neglect.
In an email, the city parks and solid waste manager Sean LeBrun said that erosion along the Heritage River Trail has been on the city’s radar for several years.
However, Cottonwood Island Park is designated as critical habitat for white sturgeon and so work in the area has to be approved by the Fisheries and Oceans Canada.
“In 2019, the federal government updated the Fisheries Act, which impacted the city’s application for erosion mitigation to this section of the trail and resulted in major cost increases due to environmental offsetting projects that must be completed,” LeBrun wrote.
“Due to the complexity of the project and the huge cost associated with it, there is no plan for erosion mitigation at this time. That said, we work to improve the Heritage River Trail often and have completed projects including new and rehabilitated trail segments, bridges, and park amenities in recent years. We will continue to improve trails throughout the community through our annual trails renewal program, including the Heritage River Trail, as budgets allow. In 2025, work in the trail renewal program was focused at Ferguson Lake.”
Work in Cottonwood Island Park in recent years included the replacement of decayed paved trails with gravel in 2024. LeBrun said 2.1 kilometres of trail were replaced.
Dustin Snyder, the president of the Spruce City Wildlife Association, echoed the city’s comments on the sturgeon protections making work along the riverbank difficult.
In Cottonwood Island Park, the association operates a salmon hatchery near a side channel of the Nechako River.
Over the years, that channel has become clogged with sediment and when the high water recedes, fish are trapped in low-oxygen, disconnected pools. Since 2022, the association has been trapping fish in the channel and transporting them to safer refuges from the winter weather.
For the last four years, SCWA has been working on obtaining permission to excavate sediment from the channel and make it safe for fish once again. Snyder said the rules aren’t as strict for the side channel as the river’s main channels, but they have had to work closely with Fisheries and Oceans Canada.
SCWA hoped to carry out the excavation this fall, but had their most recent funding request denied, leaving them to look for other sources for the remaining $60,000 to $90,000 needed for the estimated $300,000 total bill.
Some of the funding that has been collected so far has come from mining company Rio Tinto as well as the College of New Caledonia Research Forest Society Legacy Fund.
At the same time as the excavation, Snyder said the association would contract Lheidli T’enneh First Nation to carry out slope stabilization work along about 1.5 kilometres of one of the channel’s banks.
“They’ve done a lot of research and a lot of work on the Chilako River with bank stabilization and they’ve come up with this really industrial way of planting willow trees and that sort of stuff on the sides of the bank,” Snyder said.
“What they’ll do is they go in with excavators and machines and they’ll clear off those bank and then they’ll lay in larger logs and willow and then kind of half-bury them and put in some large stakes straight up and down to make sure that it’s actually going to hold. Once those willows start to grow, they really root in and take off and that’s what really holds the bank together.”
He said it’s a more natural solution than placing riprap on the banks, small rocks piled up as a breakwater and erosion protection measure. Riprap, he said, can cause issues with stream temperatures while willows can provide shade and habitat for bugs, which sometimes fall off the trees and into the water as food for the fish.
Unfortunately, this stabilization work might have its own nemesis — a beaver near the hatchery that has taken down several big cottonwood trees along the riverbank that they had expected to be there long-term to help secure the slope.
“That’s another issue that needs to be handled,” Snyder said.
“People aren’t always interested in getting rid of a beaver, but it’s one of those things that you have to weighh your options. Is this something we have to do or can the beaver be moved somewhere else … that’s something that I’m not 100 per cent sure what the choice would be and I’m not sure what the city’s protocol on that is either.”
Through this work, Snyder said, he hopes the relationship developed with Fisheries and Oceans Canada will eventually lead to more stabilization work along the river further west from Cottonwood Island Park.
“I think that there’s definitely potential for it,” he said. “It depends a little bit on the space that’s available. In some of those areas, the only space you have between the water and private property is the trail. As you get up closer to Brink’s mill, I’m not 100 per cent confident that there would be enough space there to do something like that.
While Snyder said SCWA isn’t looking for volunteers for this particular project, those interested in donating funds to make it possible or volunteer for the association’s other projects can email [email protected].
Robin Draper, the chair of the Cranbrook Hill Greenway Society’s board of directors, said in a Friday, Aug. 1 interview that erosion isn’t the only issue on Prince George’s trails.
Visiting The Citizen’s offices, Draper pulled out an iPad and showed photos he’d taken along the trail the day before.
He pointed to areas where branches from trailside plants are encroaching on the trail, creating obstacles and reducing sightlines. While the city has no control over plant life on nearby private property, he said he thinks the brush on municipal property needs to be controlled.
Wooden bollards that looked nice when they were first installed are uprooted in several areas, still connected by metal chains or wires as they lie on the side of the path.
Near the Brink mill, chunks of wood piled up on the edge of the property have started to leave debris through gaps in the chain link fence.
Several sections of fencing separating private properties from the trail are bent, twisted or half-collapsed. Draper said he doesn’t know whether the fences belong to the city, in which case they should be dealt with, or to the property owners, in which case the city should speak to them about cleaning them up.
He said he sees city staff looking after decorative parts of parks, like flower gardens, but doesn’t see them putting as much work into maintaining functional aspects like trails.
“We spent a couple of hundred thousand dollars on this renovation project,” Draper said of replacing the paved trails with gravel ones. “Why didn’t we clean up this stuff along there? They’ve been like that for several years now. It looks tacky.”
If there are logistical and regulatory concerns in dealing with eroded trail near the water, Draper suggested doing what other cities do and establishing a trail further back that still has a view of the water.
With some of the vacant properties along the riverfront, he said Prince George should do what places like Vancouver do and look to acquire them for redevelopment into park space.
Asked about the active transportation strategy being updated, Draper said there have been previous, similar efforts over the years but wondered whether the findings were put into action.
“I think for some of the older people, there is a bit of frustration,” he said. “I’m looking at the money that was spent on trying to put a multi-use trail along Otway Road … a lot of the design was done, but then it just died, didn’t go anywhere.”