By Kellah Lavoie

Closed for the season

Jul 31, 2011 | 8:25 AM

After two months, it is clear that Fort Carlton will not reopen this year.

The park closed after a big rain storm on June 20, when the road into the fort was compromised, said Larry Schiefner, previous acting park supervisor for Fort Carlton. He explained the road is built on the side of a hill and part of that hill sloughed away in the storm that accumulated five inches of rain.

“It didn’t destroy the road, it just made it unstable,” he said.

The Ministry of Highways made the decision to close the road to the public. They hired a consultant to decide on the best way to repair it. They are currently waiting for the report.

Schiefner said the road was the majority of the damage. The Fort Carlton site incurred no damage and the campground, parking lot and day-use camping experienced a higher than normal amount of mud and silt spill in from the storm.

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They have made the best of their situation.

“We’ve been putting in some new barbecues and kind of cleaning up the area. We’re also going ahead with a construction project in the fort itself,” he said, explaining it is nice to get the building constructed without causing a disturbance to people who come to the park.

Fort Carlton usually sees 9,000 to 10,000 people come through the site every year. This year they did manage to get the bulk of the school groups through, but after the storm they had to start cancelling things.

“We had a lot of special events planned for the summer and a lot of work had gone into planning those and unfortunately we were not able to carry those out as a result of it,” he said, although they are confident on being open at the beginning of next season.

There have been some setbacks for staff. Schiefner said park interpreters had to be transferred to other parks, which was an inconvenience. Maintenance staff and visitor centre staff stayed on to help clean-up the area and maintain the grounds.

“The educational opportunity for that site is amazing and at least we were able to deliver some of that this year,” he said.

The road into the site will be repaired either this fall or next spring.

klavoie@panow.com