The Province’s sign on the Incomappleux road threatens a $5,000 fine and six months in jail. Behind it are about 140 private parcels, and the Province says it has let no landowner through since 2017.

The sign stands on two wooden posts at the edge of the forest, at the 0 km mark of the Incomappleux Forest Service Road, north of Beaton at the head of Upper Arrow Lake. It is yellow, with red capitals across the top, and it reads: “No access beyond this point. Trespassers may face a fine of up to $5000 and/or 6 months in jail.”^1,2

This month a photograph of that sign went round a Facebook group for B.C. property owners. In the screenshot we were sent, one post of it had reached 64,000 people and been shared 90 times. On 17 October Kim Hubert, who posts in the group as an admin, put a caption on it that has travelled with it since: “Read this sign carefully.”¹

We did read it carefully, and we checked every line against the law, the land titles and the Province’s own documents. The heart of the post holds up. The sign threatens a $5,000 fine and six months in jail on the only road into a valley where about 140 parcels are privately owned, and the Province says it has let no landowner through its gate since 2017. Some of the rest does not hold up: the sign went up in 2021, and the jail term is the most a court could impose for driving past it, not the price of a ticket.

This is also the public’s road. It is the only way in by vehicle to Camborne, to the river and to the old-growth valley above it, and what the Province does to the owners on it, it does to everyone who once drove up it to fish, swim or walk.

01 The sign is real, and it went up in 2021. By that September the Province had moved its closing date from 21 June to 18 October.

The sign carries its own date. It says the road “will be permanently closed to public access on June 21, 2021”, and it names the Selkirk Resource District of the Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development, the ministry that ran B.C.’s forests in 2021.^1,3

We found the same sign in the archives of the Arrow Lakes Historical Society. Marilyn Taylor photographed it on 21 September 2021, and the archive describes it as a sign “warning of the road’s imminent closure.” In her photograph the closing date has been changed to 18 October 2021. The Ministry of Forests told My Nelson Now this summer that the district manager formally closed the road in October 2021.^4,5

So the photograph going round this month shows the sign as it stood in the summer of 2021, before the date was changed. It is not a new sign, and we could not confirm whether it still stands at the gate. The road itself is still closed: the district’s road page, updated on 22 October, lists it as “closed (gated and barricaded) at 0.0 km” because of failing structures and rockfall.²

The first post called it “Fish River Road’s closure”, as if it were another road. It is the same one. Fish River is “a common former name for the Incomappleux”, and the historical society files the road under “Camborne Road/Fish River Road/Incomappleux Forest Service Road”.^4,6

02 The $5,000 and six months come from a 2004 rule for forest roads. It has no exception for an owner driving home.

The sign cites no law, and one commenter under the post noticed. We found it. The Forest Service Road Use Regulation lets the Province put up “a traffic control device”, which includes a gate, a sign or a notice, and use it “to close the road totally”. Section 6 (5) then says one thing, and section 13 (1) attaches the penalty.⁷

Read closely, the rule does three things the sign does not say. It applies to anyone who drives a vehicle past the closure, and an ATV counts. It does not use the word trespass. And it makes no exception for owners, residents or holders of old Crown grants: an owner who drives up to a cabin is in the same position as anyone else.⁷

Two more facts belong beside the sign. The $5,000 and six months are the most a judge could impose after a prosecution in court. The ticket for the same thing, under the Province’s fines schedule, is called “Disobey traffic control device” and costs $86: a $75 fine and an $11 surcharge. It is an offence under a provincial regulation, not a crime under the Criminal Code, though the jail term on the sign is in the regulation.^7,8

The offence in section 6 (5) is about operating a vehicle. We found nothing in the regulation that makes it an offence to walk past the sign, although the sign says “no access” to everyone.

The power to close the road comes from the Forest and Range Practices Act. A forest service road “may be used by any person without charge for a purpose other than a timber harvesting purpose, silviculture purpose or natural resource development purpose.” That is why the commenters who called it a public road were half right. The same section lets the district manager “close the road or restrict its use” when use of it would endanger public safety, and the Province says that is what it did here.^9,10

Ministry of Forests · Incomappleux FSR deactivation FAQQuestion 2 · April 2025

Highlighted: “The Incomappleux FSR was closed under FRPA Section 22.2(3)”. The Province says it closed the road for safety, with no money for repairs and no industrial need left. The highlight is ours.¹⁰

03 Behind the gate lie 143 privately titled parcels. The Province says two people live there all year, and the rest use their places by the season.

We counted the land ourselves from the Province’s parcel map. Within a kilometre of the road and north of the gate there are 143 privately titled parcels. 134 of them are small lots on two old plans at Camborne, the mining town of the 1890s, and the other nine are larger parcels of between 1.6 and 112 hectares.¹¹

ParcelMap BC · private parcels along FSR 3397Our map of the Province’s open data · 23 October 2026

The privately titled parcels within a kilometre of the road, from the gate north past Camborne. Three more parcels lie about 11 kilometres north of Camborne, beyond the top of this map. Drawn by Backcountry Coalition from ParcelMap BC and the Province’s forest road data.¹¹

The Province’s count agrees with ours. “About 140 privately owned parcels are located in the valley and are owned by about 28 landowners.” My Nelson Now reported in July, and “The ministry said it understands there are two year-round residents in the area, while the remaining structures are used seasonally.”⁵

The people fighting the closure count more homes. Warren Mirko, executive director of the Public Land Use Society, gave the same outlet a higher count. It reported: “Mirko said the road provides access to more than 130 private properties, including about a dozen homes occupied year-round.” We could not settle which count of homes is right, and both are on the record.¹²

The history in the post is broadly right. Prospectors found ore on Pool Creek in 1892, the wagon road up the river was finished by 1898, and the Camborne townsite was surveyed in 1900. Black Press reports more than 70 land tenures and Crown grants for mineral exploration in the valley. We did not pull each title, so we cannot confirm the date of any one Crown grant. We found no ranch behind the gate in any record; the land there is mostly old town lots and riverside blocks.^6,11,13

Families have swum, fished and worked at this end of the lake for well over a century, which is the life the post describes. Beaton itself sits below the gate, outside the closure. What the sign closes is everything above it.

04 The Province says it has let no landowner through since 2017. It also says it owes them no road.

The Ministry of Forests answers the owners’ question directly in its own frequently asked questions. Asked about access for private property owners, it says the road has been:¹⁰

Ministry of Forests · Incomappleux FSR deactivation FAQQuestion 7 · April 2025

Highlighted: “gated since 2017 and no access has been allowed to landowners or the public.” The highlight is ours.¹⁰

Ministry of Forests · Incomappleux FSR deactivation FAQQuestion 13 · April 2025

Highlighted: “There is no requirement for the Ministry to provide access to private landowners.” The one route it offers is a licence of occupation under the Land Act. The highlight is ours.¹⁰

That route opens only after the road is gone. The ministry says it will apply the Land Act once the road is closed, discontinued and returned to vacant Crown land, and that “The Selkirk Natural Resource District is going to continue with our deactivation plans regardless of if an application is made under the Land Act, because it is obligated to relieve itself of liability.”¹⁰

This year the district wrote to at least one owner that its work “will permanently remove road access to your private property.” The owners quoted that letter in a June press release; we have not seen it ourselves.¹⁴

In practice owners have kept going in. Black Press reported in August that they reach their land on foot, by bike or by ATV, “requiring them to walk, bike or ATV due to the concrete barricade and gate barring larger vehicles.” The ministry told the same reporter that the public kept using the road, “with gating and barriers being damaged or removed” and that it had to put in more. When more than 70 people toured the road on 8 July, the ministry sent natural resource officers, “who informed attendees they weren’t allowed to travel the FSR beyond the barricade.”¹³

On this point the post is right. An owner who drives an ATV to a cabin behind that gate is doing what the sign forbids, and the Province has said in writing that it gives owners no exception.

05 We found no case of anyone fined or jailed for passing the gate. The Province has not said whether it has written a single ticket.

We searched the news coverage of the closure since 2021 and the ministry’s statements, and found no report of a ticket, a charge or a conviction. We have not searched court records, so we cannot say that none exists. What the record does show is officers at the barricade telling people where they could not go, and a sign that prints the maximum penalty rather than the ticket.^8,13

A sign does not have to be enforced to work. A $5,000 threat at the gate keeps most people out on its own, and it falls on the owner going home exactly as it falls on a stranger.

06 Kim Hubert’s post is right that access is being lost. It is wrong that the sign is not about a bridge, and the threat it describes is not new.

“This is not a warning about a dangerous bridge.” The sign gives two reasons in its own words, a bridge with a load rating of zero tonnes and an extreme rockfall hazard. The ministry says a 150-cubic-metre rockfall in 2006 damaged the bridge, and it adds a third reason the sign leaves out: “there are no funds available to do maintenance on it.”^1,10

“Can now get them fined or locked up.” The penalty has been in the regulation since 2004, and the sign has stood since 2021. What is new is that the road is being taken out: the ministry told Black Press that work on the west side of the river is set for 2026, and that the two bridges are scheduled to come out in the 2027 season. CBC reported in September that the road had been deactivated; the district’s own page still says deactivation planning is underway.^2,7,13,15

“They criminalized access to homes.” Driving past the closure is a provincial offence, not a crime, and it does reach owners going home. “Driving people out of valleys they’ve lived in for decades.” overstates it: the ministry itself says residents still live on both sides of the river, although once the bridges go they will have no road out.^7,13

“…and more of them coming.” This is fair. The same district lists six roads for deactivation, among them Sitkum Creek and the road to Rady Creek above Trout Lake, which we have reported on.^2,16

Several commenters tied the sign to the Incomappleux Conservancy, set up in January 2023. The sign came first, by about nineteen months. The ministry says the forest roads “The FSR’s were excluded from the Conservancy as they fall under the Ministry of Forests jurisdiction to manage.” and BC Parks says the conservancy “This conservancy has no road access, trails, or facilities.” The 2023 release quotes the Shuswap Band and the Colville Confederated Tribes on stewardship of the conservancy, and BC Parks says a management framework with First Nations is in development. We found no document that gives any Nation, or any “3P agreement”, a say over this road. The closure is the district manager’s call under the Forest and Range Practices Act.^9,10,17,18

07 The closure was a Ministry of Forests decision in 2021. Today it belongs to Ravi Parmar, B.C.’s Minister of Forests.

In 2021 the ministry was run by Katrine Conroy, then Minister of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development, and the Selkirk district by its district manager, Tara DeCourcy. We have not seen the closure order itself, so we do not know who signed it. The district manager today is Charlene Strelaeff.^3,19

The valley is in his riding. We set out his record on the closure, and his opponents’, in our piece on McInnis and our guide to the riding.²⁰

08 Read carefully, the sign says the Province will fine an owner for driving home. In our view, an owner should not need a lawyer to reach their own land.

Kim Hubert told her readers to read the sign carefully, and she was right to. It is five years old, and the jail term on it is the most a court could impose, not the ticket. But it still means what she said it means. Behind it lie about 140 private parcels, the Province has let no owner through for nine years, and it says in writing that it owes them no road.

The sign is old, and the jail term is a maximum. The threat to owners is real: the rule behind it has no exception for people going home.

The fix sits with the ministry that put the sign up. It can give the owners a lawful way through in writing, and it can tell the public whether anyone has been fined. Once the bridges come out, no sign will be needed, and the public’s way into the Incomappleux goes with the owners’. Ask the Minister of Forests to settle it before then.