Bow Valley outdoor fanatics can rejoice as areas along Legacy Trail and Cascade Ponds have reopened for recreational usage, including the addition of new bridges and a revived aquatic habitat.
Flood affected areas near the east entrance of the Town of Banff were repaired and, in some cases, improved upon, said John Rose, asset manager for the Banff Field Unit, as culverts were replaced and retaining walls, a new wildlife gate and electro-mats were installed to “be able to withstand similar events in the future with minor damage.
“We had to rebuild two major sections between Cascade Pond and the Legacy Trail that runs alongside the highway and then we had to replace a full kilometre of trail that was totally gone from the junction point at the Trans-Canada Highway eastward,” Rose said.
Along with major restoration of the trail, two popular bridges destroyed by the June 2013 flood were also replaced with construction on a third bridge underway. Spray Loop and Goat Creek bridges, both affected in several locations, have been replaced, while the Cascade Fire Road bridge is currently being constructed.
“The key thing is, this time around we made a conscious decision not to have to do this again in a lifetime, so we really put some hard engineering into the reconstruction of these bridges to insure they’re built a lot more robust at the foundations and they can withstand a fair bit of high water,” Rose said.
“(Cascade Fire Road) is being fabricated now and will arrive on site sometime in early December. The trail work is being undertaken right now and should be opened in mid to late January for cross-country skiing.”
Rose and the crew took advantage of having heavy machinery to help convert a dry grassy ditch into a fairly healthy, little creek along the restored kilometre stretch adjacent to Legacy Trail.
Bill Hunt, resource conservation manager at Banff Field Unit, said what they are working on now is removing non-native fish from the area, including invasive brook trout.
“One of the challenges we’ve had is the habitat has also been severely compromised so the whole section below the Minnewanka reservoir only received a very small flow, so we’re working with TransAlta to improve the habitat as well,” Hunt said.
“In some cases, because it (Cascade Creek) was dry for so many years, it didn’t look like a creek years ago, but with last year’s flooding the creek was largely restored. So this spring we were able to go back in and do a little bit of work with the backhoe to create pools, riffles and runs, which is all critical habitat components for trout.”
Fish native to Banff National Park include cutthroat and bull trout.
Parks Canada is also working on restoring an upstream where the Cascade gravel pits used to be, with efforts currently underway. The end product would be a smaller, healthier creek, with native fish.
“Loss of spring runoff and lack of adequate water really degraded the habitat over the past 50 to 70 years and so we were kind of given a big boost last year because the flooding actually restored the riparian habitat (and) renewed the gravel, renewed the rock, took out some of the vegetation and meshed perfectly with some of the other work we were doing there to reconfigure the creek.”
