by Ian Elliot
Northern News Services

NNSL (Oct 24/97) - You can't fight city hall, the saying goes, but city hall can't fight one of the most attractive kid magnets imaginable -- a rolling, snow-covered hill.

And for more than 15 years in Yellowknife, the city hasn't even tried.

Each year, a stretch of 51A Avenue between 55th and 56th Streets is closed to traffic from about the time the first snow falls until the spring melt so that kids can use the exposed rock for their winter pursuits without worrying that they will slide into traffic.

"You can never stop kids," said Mickey Forrest of the city's public works department. "You can just make things so that they won't get hurt."

The attraction of the area for kids on toboggans is obvious. Not only is the hill close to a large school-age population, but the landscape in the area is a sledders' heaven, with rolling rock faces absent of trees or steep drops that could spoil a descent.

As many as 25 young sledders descend on the hill every afternoon after school, and a steady stream of bundled-up youngsters trundles in and out of the area on weekends, sleds in tow.

The barricades have been going up on the street for the past 15 to 18 autumns, Forrest says, and there have never been any complaints received from area residents about them being there.

"We talked to the people who lived in the area before we put them up and none of them had a problem with us doing that," he said.

All the houses in the area still have access to their properties through back alleys.

The city does encourage sledding in other areas more removed from traffic. Forrest notes that a new snowboard slope has been put in by the city at Bristol Pits, near the airport, to complement the established toboggan course there.