Fall & early winter update from MRWA

We had a busy and productive fall in the McIntosh Run. Most Saturday mornings and Sunday afternoons and the odd weeknight this fall you’d have found a crew of trail builders somewhere in the McIntosh Run Watershed digging dirt, moving rocks, or “grubbing” new trail. We’ve been upgrading existing and building new singletrack trails as part of the McIntosh Run Trails network.

Volunteers finished the ‘In-N-Out’, ‘Nora’, ‘Warren’, and the first part of the ‘West Pine’ trails at the south end of the trail network over the summer. These trails passed trail inspections by NS DNR and HRM (the landowners) with flying colours in mid September. MRWA celebrated this with a public ribbon cutting and official trail opening on September 25^th. It was a very positive event with many volunteers, neighbours, and city councilors in attendance. Since the opening we’ve received terrific feedback from trail users of all ages. Many young riders and runners are thrilled with the berms and boardwalks on the beginner level ‘In-N-Out’ trail.

With these first trails open MRWA switched our building efforts to the north end of the trail system focusing on the area known to many as the Fight Trail. MRWA, with a grant from Mountain Equipment Coop, contracted TrailFlow to help build the brand new trail ‘Osprey’ beginning at Alabaster Way in Spryfield. TrailFlow led several volunteer trail days including a day with junior builders from the Young Naturalists Club. ‘Osprey’ was mostly complete by the end of November and will formally open in the spring.

Two new entrance trails are in the final stages of construction off of Mica Crescent (also in the north or Fight Trail end of the McIntosh Run System). The ‘Spar’ and ‘Divide’ trails along with a connector trail ‘Nothin’ Fancy’ – named for it’s furniture shaped boulders – are nearing completion as of this writing.

MRWA volunteers have also been working on upgrades to several existing informal trails that are being formalized as part of the McIntosh Run Trails system. ‘The Attic’ and ‘Lou’s Basement’ have had upgrades addressing wet areas and realignment where needed. This work will continue through the winter and spring as allowed by the weather. Dillon Consulting provided a crew for a few days again this year to help with this work.

MRWA held a post build volunteer BBQ with sausages provided (and cooked) by Cavicchi’s Meats on a chilly December 2^nd. Over 20 volunteer builders came for the morning and enjoyed a tasty lunch in the HRM park lot off Mica Crescent.

As an organization MRWA is ecstatic about the number of volunteers coming out to help build trail. We continually have new faces showing up to trail build days and are very grateful to our dedicated regulars who return again and again. It must be Kaarin’s cookies that keep them coming back! Please come check out our trails for yourselves if you haven’t already.