Less traffic made it’s way into Golden Ears Provincial Park during the long weekend, largely in part to the new day pass system initiated last week.
On Aug. 1 about 2,800 vehicles entered the park, on Aug. 2 there were a little more than 3,000, and on B.C. Day, Aug. 3, park staff saw about 2,800 vehicles again.
Compare that to Victoria Day this year when gates to the park had to be shut at 9:30 a.m. because of the high demand. And after a series of intermittent openings, by the end of the day 3,368 vehicles had entered the park.
Park operations manager, Stu Burgess, describes the new numbers as “very manageable”.
“I think it was a little to do with the weather,” said Burgess about the decline in vehicles over the weekend.
READ MORE: Record numbers flock to Golden Ears Provincial Park
“But with the day-use passes, we’ve seen the number of vehicles just arriving at the park quite drastically decreased over the past week – which is the intent of the passes – just to try and cut down on the unmanageable volumes. And it’s down to something we can quite easily handle,” said Burgess.
Rolley Lake was their usual busy, added Burgess.
On Aug. 1 there were 700 vehicles that entered Rolley Lake Provincial Park, on Aug. 2, 820 vehicles entered and on Aug. 3, 660.
READ MORE: Golden Ears park near Maple Ridge closed due to ‘medical incident’
Sunday morning Golden Ears park was closed for two hours due to a medical emergency.
People in the park couldn’t get out and people that were outside the park with day passes couldn’t get in.
Outbound were lines up to leave the park and inbound visitors were turned around at the main gate and told by park staff to come back later, noted Burgess.
Other than that, he said, there were only a couple of minor distress calls, a few minor injuries and a couple of disputes in the campground they had to break up.
“Nothing that we’re not used to and haven’t seen many times before,” said Burgess.
cflanagan@mapleridgenews.com
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