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Hiking Pinecone-Burke Mountain, by the book

During his 30 years with the RCMP, Lyle Litzenberger's writing experience was limited to court affidavits and search warrant documents.

During his 30 years with the RCMP, Lyle Litzenberger's writing experience was limited to court affidavits and search warrant documents.

But since retiring, the Port Coquitlam resident has traded criminal investigations for inquiries of another sort, diligently hunting and pecking his computer keyboard to outline his findings.

The result is a comprehensive guide to 28 hikes on Pinecone-Burke Mountain, meticulously researched to provide everything from GPS coordinates and elevation maps to driving directions to the various trailheads.

"It struck us that Pinecone-Burke is kind of a diamond in the rough," Litzenberger said. "It is so close but there are not a lot of people that frequent it.

"With so many people moving on to the mountain, we thought it would be a very useful tool for a lot of people to properly explore the area."

Burke and Widgeon: A Hiker's Guide has 260 pages and features a range of hikes with turn-by-turn trail descriptions for both the novice weekend walker and the experienced hiker.

Some trails described in the book only take about 20 minutes to walk while others can be combined and take a weekend to complete. Each hike in the book is accompanied with at least one map, with some of the larger routes including as many as five.

The book also tells hikers which areas have cellphone coverage, a crucial safety tip for anyone venturing out into the woods.

Litzenberger said he got the idea for the guide in 2008, most of the exploration work was done in 2009 and 2010, and he began to seriously sit down and write in February 2011.

"It's sort of like one step forward, two steps back," he said. "This was my first [writing] venture. If I did it again, it would probably go a lot faster. You make your mistakes and you waste time that way."

Copies of the book will arrive next month and he hopes to sell the bulk of them through his website, www.burkeandwidgeon.com, which will be live in mid-August.

While the guidebook is Litzenberger's first foray into the world of publishing, he said it likely will not be his last.

Initially, he hoped to include a few chapters in Burke and Widgeon: A Hiker's Guide that would cover the history of the park, from its time as a logging area in the early 1900s to becoming the popular recreational destination it is today.

'CARRIED AWAY

"I started getting into the history and I kind of got carried away," he said. "I looked at old newspaper clippings going back to 1912 and started interviewing people. You'd talk to one person and invariably they would tell you to talk to someone else, and then someone else after that."

After conducting 71 interviews and spending more than 100 hours in the library researching, Litzenberger has decided he will spin his work into a second book.

He has also collected albums worth of photographs, some of which have never been seen by the public, he said.

But the most rewarding part of researching the hikers' guide and the history project is the people he has met. Litzenberger said he has made friends with members of the Burke Mountain Naturalists and has met a number of lifelong Tri-City residents who have spent years exploring Pinecone-Burke Mountain.

"Interviewing people, that is great," he said. "They have great stories and great pictures, and everyone has been really nice. I enjoy that part of it so much."

gmckenna@tricitynews.com