Police investigate traps set on Maple Ridge biking trails

WATCH: It happened in North Vancouver first and now someone is sabotaging mountain bike trails in Maple Ridge. John Hua reports.

A little more than a month after a North Shore woman was charged with sabotaging mountain bike trails, police are investigating trail traps in Maple Ridge.

Someone appears to have dragged logs onto the Bear Ridge Trail, deliberately positioning them to injure cyclists.

“It was deliberate because these particular logs were a couple of trees that I had personally removed from the trail about a month or so ago,” says Dean Wilkes, who has been riding the trail for 13 years. “They’re five- or six-foot sections of logs, each weighing about 60 pounds apiece. They don’t accidentally roll onto the trail.”

The obstacles weren’t isolated to one spot on the path, but littered across different sections of the trail. Another sign that foul play may be involved is that some of the traps were laid around blind spots, making them harder for mountain bikers to avoid.

“Your front wheel stops and you go flying over the bike face-first,” says Wilkes of the traps. “You would hit the first log with your bike and your body, face, everything else would have hit the next log. It would have been catastrophic.”

The traps were eerily similar to those found in North Vancouver on Mt. Fromme. A 64-year-old woman was charged in that incident.

-with files from John Hua