“Get out and do it.”
Steve Staves has spent the past eight years mapping the Prince George trails to Google Maps. A physical endeavour the English-born has pursued in hopes of bringing residents and tourists out in order to enjoy the natural wonders in and around the city.
“A lot of people have either been too afraid to go out on the trails because they don’t know where it’s going to take them, or they’ve been out there and they have actually been lost,” Staves told MyPGNow. “I’ve spoken with a few people who have been lost on the trails and they wished they had maps like that a while back.”
The trail systems he’s plotted into easy-to-coordinate maps on Google have been Prince George’s Nordic Ski Centre and the Pidherny system.
The process in which Staves used to track the maps is much simpler than many might expect, with Staves complimenting the accessibility of modern technology.
According to Staves, he uses a fitness watch that tracks his GPS coordinates every three seconds. He said the tedious work came in when it came time to break up all the routes, as the watch only would track movement as one continuous segment. According to him, the last couple of months have been spent taking pictures of all of the trail start and endpoints, as a way to bring landmarks as an added component to the maps. Staves said it was easy to then plot the photos accordingly thanks to features that allow users to pinpoint the exact location in which an image was shot.
“Almost everything I found online, there was no definitive points of origin for any of the trails,” explained Staves regarding the significance of the imagery for the maps.
In the last ten years, Staves says he’s either walked or ran 30-40,000 kilometres trails since making the switch from road running. Injuries to both of his knees led him to seek an alternative, which resulted in him hitting the trails when the idea was suggested to him.
“Initially, I started running… I was doing road running. Besides destroying my knees, you always have to deal with traffic, deal with people, deal with the pollution from the vehicles going by you, there’s always the noise; I just didn’t like it,” said Staves. “When somebody suggested to go out and run on the trails, the first time I did it, it was just like… peace. I would define it more as its serenity out on the trails because you get away from the hustle and bustle of everyday life. I find it really enjoyable.”
Staves, who moved to Prince George in 1991, says many of the trails have benches along the main routes, many in which he’s sat for a while, taking in his surroundings as he gets away from the busy city living.
When he started 10 years ago, it would be rare he’d ever see anyone on the trails. But now, he says he always sees people out enjoying the trails, which is exactly what he’s hoping to achieve with the access to the maps.
The trails may not necessarily be for everyone, however, as Staves has had to deal with in his own household. As strong-spoken as he is on his enjoyment of the trails, he’s still yet to talk his own wife and kids into finding the same enjoyment.
“No matter how hard I try to get them on the trail they won’t go, I’ve tried every trick in the book and it still doesn’t work on them,” he said with a chuckle.
The one thing Staves would like to see, especially in the area of the Pidherny trails, is a larger portion being protected. Many of the trails have provincial government signage, however, as more trails get built and the system expands, many trails still sit vulnerable to potentially being destroyed by development.
“A huge portion of the trails are not covered in that area because of where they’ve been built,” said Staves. “I would love to see our city increase that area to cover all those trails that have been built in the meantime because it should be a much larger area than what it is.”
Links to both trail systems can be accessed here:
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