DWG received a letter from Patrick Weiler, MP for West Vancouver–Sunshine Coast–Sea to Sky Country concerning mapping of trails which may have resulted in a serious accident near Pemberton, BC.
The letter claims that local communities and trail organizations have raised concerns about the quality of trails mapped in OSM. The letter claims that these trails are incomplete, unsanctioned, unsafe, cross environmentally sensitive areas, on private land, or indigenous areas where public access is prohibited.
I would like to put together a team of local mappers familiar with mapping trails so we can meet with the MP, local community, and trail organizations to discuss how to identify and resolve these issues.
I’m just over 120k south in Washington State and would be happy to meet in person.
note that in past some MTBers were trying to coordinate in making malicious legal action, some were daydreaming on public forum about assaulting people who mapped illegal trails they built
so I would advise caution in revealing your identify or location or about meeting in person
especially if someone mapped MTB trails in a given area
not saying that these group definitely has similar people, but I would be cautious
Note that I reported post to moderation there and it stayed up. Also, other posters ignored it or expressed agreement with it. So this is apparently approved behavior in at least that subsection of MTB community.
This is a potentially perilous path to start down. Such a meeting might imply that OSMF is taking some amount of legal responsibility for the quality of data in OSM and therefore the consequences of its use.
There is always going to be the possibility of a map not correctly representing reality, regardless of it being a paper map (inevitably out of date by the time it ships) or an online live update map. It is the responsibility of the map user to judge if what the map says is safe and correct before committing to a committing to a course of action. Don’t just turn left because the car’s navigation said to, look at the signs to see if left turns are allowed. Don’t just go down that trail because the biking app said it was a gentle ride, know the area and topography.
Google, Apple, Microsoft, etc. have the same problem. They rely more on automation to generate their map data but still get things very wrong sometimes: private roads that are marked public, roads that are mislabelled, roads that go through barriers (I once saw an Uber driver stranded in the University of Alberta quad because their navigation software somehow got them through the car barriers). The difference is that those companies have armies of lawyers to write Terms Of Service and to protect them in cases of lawsuits.
Anyways I’m preaching to the choir here. My suggestion would be to start by providing MP Weiler with a detailed explanation of what OSM is, how it works, and what the fundamental limitations are. Can OSMF keep up to date with trail conditions when hazards include tree falls (Bike Pemberton Facebook)? Perhaps then MP Weiler can meet with locals and trail organizations and encourage them to take ownership of the issue. In particular I would expect the trail organizations and responsible trail users to become a lot more active in policing the data and the behaviour of their peers.
Thanks everyone for their input. I’m aware of some of the previous issues and have dealt with some of the issues in my DWG role. My belief is that the local community can come together to improve the mapping of trails in the area. That is why I as for local volunteers. And I do have experience with some of the local mappers in the area from running a Vancouver Meetup as well as teaching JOSM to a Maptime group. So my role is more of a distant local.
The complaint received by DWG has been given to the OSMF Board. They are circulating a response that should go out early next week.
I am neither a British Columbia mapper nor a lawyer, but I find the mention of a “serious accident” in connection to OSM mapping practices in the opening communication to carry highly unpleasant implications of fault, and would encourage any mappers to read the linked thread first and then speak to a lawyer before speaking to the group in question
This looks to concern the trail mapping I and others have done in the south coast region of British Columbia, but this is not really an issue just specific to this region.
I encourage reading my previous response to the concerns raised by this group.
Serious Incident
I first want to address the “serious accident near Pemberton, BC”. This incident being referenced occurred on the “Deadfall” (or “Dead Fall”) trail outside of Pemberton, BC on October 17, 2024. The Deadfall trail is an unsanctioned mountain bike trail that features free ride style stunt features in the double black diamond to pro-line IMBA difficulty range and was built approximately 15 to 20 years ago.
The rider that suffered the life altering crash was a teenage girl who was an experienced mountain bike racer and was the national downhill racing champion for her age bracket. It has been reported in the Squamish Chief newspaper that she was with her coach at the time of the incident and was practicing on an optional rock-drop feature. It has been reported that the family of the teenage girl has since sued the regional district, who appears to be the owner of the property.
The coach the girl was reported to be with is an internationally known mountain bike social media influencer and professional mountain bike coach. It is not known whether the girl was being directly coached at the time of the incident. The coach had posted the trail several times on his YouTube channel and in the videos you can see the coach removing brush and making repairs to the trail including to the specific feature where the incident is believed to have happened.
Portions of the trail are also used as a descent trail for rock climbing in the adjacent Electric Edge climbing area.
A portion of the was originally added by user pfunkman in October 2022, where they added a highway=path feature to represent the descent trail from the rock climbing area. I edited the trail in July 2025 to add more information including marking it as unsanctioned and provided a description of it as an unsanctioned pro-line difficulty mountain bike trail.
In conclusion, since the incident occurred prior to information about the trail being published on OpenStreetMap and since the individuals had prior knowledge of the trail, I don’t believe OpenStreetMap in any way contributed to the incident.
Further, I believe the individuals that are trying to tie this incident to OpenStreetMap know that OpenStreetMap did not play a part in the incident and are maliciously misleading public officials like MP Wieler by leaving out the details I have provided.
Claims that these trails are incomplete, unsanctioned, unsafe, cross environmentally sensitive areas, on private land, or indigenous areas where public access is prohibited.
This can be best described as ‘throwing mud at a wall’ to find any reason to remove trails from OpenStreetMap.
Where trails are unsanctioned they are annotated with informal=yes to follow the best practices developed by the OpenStreetMap US Trails Stewardship Initiative (a collaboration of government, volunteer, and private sector stakeholders working to address issues in trail mapping, outdoor recreation, and public land management). One challenge with this is that no level of government locally has an accurate and up-to-date authoritative database for which trails are sanctioned. In addition, some trails may be sanctioned in one jurisdiction but then cross into another jurisdiction where they are not sanctioned. Additionally, some trails may have official signage and officially approved maintenance but not be sanctioned.
For trails that cross private land or have legal access prohibitions they are marked with the appropriate access tags. This again has challenges due to lack of posted signage, inconsistent posted signage, lack of legal guidance from authorities, and undocumented permissive licenses.
I can assure that significant time investment has been contributed to meticulously ensure trails are tagged properly and this region is one of the best on OpenStreetMap, especially given the challenges noted.
I should note that in the last OpenStreetMap Community Forum thread, where the subset of individuals associated with the local mountain bike community raised concerns, I did recommend that we try to work with them to resolve their concerns by working together to add a tag such as trail_sensitive=yes/no, which would mark a trail as being locally sensitive. This would have to meet OpenStreetMap’s verifiability guidelines so would require some form of posted signage or web information from a government authority or trail organization. Such a tag would allow this group to go to specific downstream applications and ask that they don’t show such trails. Unfortunately, the individuals did not appear to have any appetite for such a resolution and continued to argue for complete removal until the thread was locked.
Meeting
I am able to meet with the Patrick Weiler, MP for West Vancouver–Sunshine Coast–Sea to Sky if a local representative is needed.
Unfortunately I am not comfortable meeting with the specific subset of individuals associated with the local mountain bike community as many of them have directly threatened the lives of other members of the community, my family, and myself. They have also published personal details of my family and myself and have been engaging in an on-going criminal harassment campaign. And finally, they have also continued to spread malicious lies on social media websites about OpenStreetMap, the Data Working Group, and myself.
In addition, one member associated with this group of individuals has filed an artistic copyright for a trail (Copyright Registration Number: 1246261), sued the OpenStreetMap Foundation (File Number: 2629351), and asked the court to reveal my personal information.
Conclusion
I want to conclude by reiterating that we should continue to try to work this group but this group is going to have to change their behaviour before we can work with them. Criminal uttering threats, criminal harassment, criminal unauthorized use of a computer, maliciously misleading politicians and spreading lies on social media, filing creative legal cases, vandalizing trails and trail signage, and repeatedly creating new accounts is just behaviour that is unworkable.
Unfortunately it is a legal risk to discuss a matter publicly when there is a pending legal proceeding, no matter if sincere or nefarious. Please understand that the Foundation must therefore close this thread for the moment being.
