For the first time in years, the Brothers Creek Trail has a safe way to cross the creek it shares a name with.
District of West Vancouver staff and contractors used a helicopter to bring a new 14.8-metre custom bridge over Brothers Creek, re-establishing a trail that has been severed since 2017.
“It is a very critical connection in the Upper Lands,” said Ian Haras, park planning and development manager for the district. “It gets you into the cabin area and into B.C. Parks.”
Some time in the winter of 2017, the original bridge simply disappeared.
“We think what happened is the creek got really high during one high-water event and just literally lifted the bridge up and took it downstream. There's a waterfall just past the bridge downstream and it just went down the waterfall and was destroyed,” Haras said. “We couldn't really find any evidence of the bridge. It was rather bizarre.”
No one in the district knew how old the previous bridge was. It was rudimentary – just two large logs felled across the creek with a deck and railings scabbed in on top.
“We think it could have been an old skid road bridge when forestry was going up there,” Haras said.
Since then, experienced hikers could scramble across the creek but only if the water was low, Haras said, and it would have been quite dangerous for a novice.
The new bridge has been built to modern standards. These include concrete abutments, which have already been poured.
“It wasn't like a bridge you could buy off the shelf. We had to have it manufactured and engineered to the span we needed. And then the abutments had to be engineered as well,” Haras said.
On Monday morning, crews rigged the bridge to the bottom of a Talon Helicopter at a Cypress Bowl Road parking lot and flew it to Brothers Creek.
Given their experience with Talon, members of North Shore Rescue were on-hand to help guide the bridge into place.
“It couldn't have been any better, actually,” said Haras. “From the time we heard them overhead to the time the bridge was on the abutments, it couldn't have been more than 10 minutes.”
North Shore Rescue team leader Mike Danks said the bridge fit into place "like a glove."
There was already a group of eager hikers glad to have the bridge back. The first member of the public to cross was a man who had come to spend his 77th birthday on the Brothers Creek Trail, Haras said.
“It's great to have that connection and be able to get people across the bridge safely and at all times of the year,” he said.
Reaching the bridge on the trail takes about 40 minutes on foot, from the trailhead on Millstream Road, at the top of the British Properties.
The budget for the project is $170,000.
