Cancourse | With Great Land, Comes Great Responsibility
Outdoor recreation enthusiasts in Coeur d’Alene, rejoice! You rallied as a city, as a responsible community, to voice your concerns about county overreach that threatened to take away access to Canfield Mountain from town and your voice was heard. Now let’s make sure we honor this gift that the Evans Family so generously offered to the public and never abuse it. If you don’t know what I’m talking about you can crawl out from under your rock and read about Cancourse here.
The reason I am writing today is that Cancourse is not out of the woods yet (figuratively speaking). While there is much to celebrate with the very forward thinking memorandum that lays out a plan for the City of Coeur d’Alene to lease the land and manage it as a park for the benefit of the public, there are still a small few who don’t want to see that happen. It’s hard to understand why anyone would oppose public access to over 100 acres of forest with great trails and views. We can look at the complaints and possibly surmise that a Land Developer is bent about not having bought the land himself to develop it. Or we can infer that a couple of neighbors (who bought houses in a neighborhood where a trailhead already existed! pfft) are worried about sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll disrupting their private backyard mountain. But the fact remains that there are still a motivated few who would like to see the lease agreement with the city fail and the public shut out, despite that being an egregious infringement on property rights.
So what do we do about this predicament? It’s very simple, we respect the land, as most hikers and bikers already do. Here are a few guidelines I propose for using the trails at the end of Shadduck and in the Copper Ridge neighborhood:
Follow all posted signage for where to park your car (The Shadduck Lane Park is a great spot to start from).
If you are parking by the curb near the end of the Shadduck Terminus, be mindful that there are houses which back up to both sides.
Enjoy your post-ride/hike beverage at The Post Ride, Paragon, Mad Bomber, Daft Badger or several other local breweries/restaurants (or back at the house with your buddies).
If you are with your favorite four legged recreation partner make sure they are on a leash on public streets and under your control on the trails, and always pick up after them.
Along those lines; Pack it in, pack it out. Heck, pack it out even if it’s not yours.
Avoid confrontation if at all possible. If someone is trying to harass you, first, attempt to de-escalate and if that doesn’t work, take out your phone and video record the confrontation. You can email any adverse interactions to contact@cancourse.net.
Give high fives, kiss babies, and preach mutual respect. It will literally cost you nothing.
If we all do this, there will be nothing of significance to complain about. It doesn’t mean some unscrupulous people won’t try to sabotage the lease agreement by trying to prove that the public can’t use the land responsibly. They may even use the trails and leave their own trash, or convince friends with dirt bikes to illegally trespass onto Cancourse, tear up the trails, knock down fences, and generally cause a ruckus. But if enough people continue to use these trails responsibly and often, it will have the effect of regulating unwanted behavior.
It’s a simple enough solution. Just go enjoy these trails, do it responsibly, and if you need some inspiration, check out this post for an after work adventure.