Signs warn of quicksand in the GTA - but how real is the threat?
A spot at Mavis Road near the 401 in Mississauga cautions against the muddy trap along Fletcher’s Creek. The Ministry of Transportation says there’s ‘still a potential of soft conditions.’

thestar.com
Aug. 13, 2014
By Jonathan Forani

A menace fit for Hollywood may be lurking in the riverbeds of the GTA, if you believe the road signs.

Quicksand, the muddy trap that eats your boots and sucks you in the more you writhe, is closer to home than you think.

“The harder you try, the deeper you sink,” warns University of Toronto professor of earth sciences Ulrich Wortmann, who has been sucked in by the phenomena before. “It’s a scary feeling.”

One of the most clearly marked spots is along Fletcher’s Creek in Mississauga, near Mavis Road and Highway 401, where drivers can see two red warning signs reading: “DANGER QUICKSAND DO NOT ENTER.”

As it turns out, the warning has been there for more than 30 years, says Ministry of Transportation spokesperson Ajay Woozageer. The current red signs have been in place since 2013, when it replaced older, illegible signs. So far, they’ve done their job. There have been no incidents involving quicksand at Fletcher’s Creek, he says.

Neighbouring Meadowvale Conservation Area and streets with old timey names like Early Settler Row, it seems right that the area is home to a trap as mythic as quicksand. When the Star visited the area, scaling fallen tree trunks and old wire fencing, the babbling Fletcher’s Creek was quiet and unassuming. There was little evidence of quicksand, yet the signs remain.

Jim Young, a resident on nearby street Jazzy Mews, often goes mountain biking through that area of forest, but has never come across quicksand. “I’ve never heard anything of this,” he says. He doesn’t often take his children through the area, but wonders if the signs are still in place to ward off teenagers from loitering in the woods. The fear of quicksand might do the trick.

For quicksand to be an effective menace, professor Wortmann says, the sand should be of one grain type, saturated by water to appear solid — but it’s not. “If you’re down to your chest, I doubt you’ll get out,” Wortmann says, who was pulled down to his knees in quicksand while in a southern Utah canyon. But for the professor and his merry crew, it was a kind of game. “We had a lot of fun there,” he laughs. “My wife didn’t like it, but my son had a blast and lost both his shoes in there.”

While potentially dangerous, quicksand is not very common here, he says. So why are there two alarming red danger signs warning of just that?

The MTO signs were first erected around 30 years ago when maintenance staff noticed the “soft conditions” in the area, Woozageer says. “The ground conditions today have improved, but there is still a potential of soft conditions, depending on the volume of rain that is received,” he says, never using the word “quicksand.”

In fact, the signs may be overly alarmist. According to city spokesperson John Gosgnach, there are “soft spots” in some river banks or in wetlands that are “hard to get out of,” but they do not necessarily qualify as quicksand.

Last summer when Lindsay Schoenbohm, an earth scientist at University of Toronto Mississauga campus, visited the 401 location with a local TV news crew, the cameraman’s boots were pulled under as Schoenbohm explained the geology of quicksand. “That’s a bit of theatrics,” Schoenbohm concedes, calling the muddy area “quicksand-like” if not genuine quicksand. “I wasn’t sure if we weren’t in the right spot or if it was just not as dire as the signs made it seem,” she says.

While quicksand may appear menacing in popular culture, most of the time, there’s little to worry about — if the trap is even there, Schoenbohm says. “It’s not like the movies where you get swallowed up and your hat remains on the top of the pile.”