Newsletter April 2008
April 04, 2008

General Meetings

We now have regular quarterly General Meetings. They occur on the first Thursday in the months of April, June, September and December. Please obtain details from our calendar.

Memberships and Donations

We are also undertaking to contact each of you for your critical financial support. Memberships are $20 for an individual, or $30 for a family. We rely on your fees and donations to keep building and maintaining trails, and recreation sites; attending meetings with government and industry representatives to protect and enhance our recreation/tourism facilities, and to pay for other operating costs. We wholeheartedly appreciate your generosity and commitment to enhance and secure Powell River's outdoor opportunities through membership fees, and donations. Our accountant Hillary Bruhn will issue tax receipts. Please make out your cheques to:

PRPAWS, Box 345, Powell River, BC, V8A 5C2.

Hut To Hut Hiking

You may already be aware that we are partnering with School District 47, the BOMB Squad, and Model Communities in putting together a proposal to access funding to build chalets, huts and shelters along the Sunshine Coast Trail. We are also approaching other potential partners in the endeavor. Our submission has included many letters of support from a variety of groups and organizations. We are in the early stages of creating a Sunshine Coast Trail organization, which would have a board, comprised of a variety of groups with an interest in the trail and its further development. This will help make the application more likely to succeed. There are many conditions that must be met, and we are confident we will succeed in putting huts along the SCT.

Millennium Park

Another meeting is being scheduled with Island Timberlands this month to finally resolve how many trees will be left in Millennium Park. We believe we have come up with a good plan that will result in leaving large wooded areas, and also create open green space as for example at Beacon Hill Park in Victoria, or Lost Lake in Stanley Park. The plan will ensure certainty for a park in the centre of the city, while also providing value to the current owner of the trees. We have worked on this file for eight years now and hope that at last we will achieve certainty on this green space in the centre of the city.

Eagle (Lois) River

Last month together with Malaspina Group of the BC Sierra Club we traveled to Nanaimo to meet with Darshan Sihota to advocate for recreation/tourism/biodiversity values on the Canoe Route, the Sunshine Coast Trail, and the Eagle River Greenways Corridor. We had a frank exchange of ideas that hopefully will lead to some protections for these areas. While we did not come away with any formal agreement at this early stage, we were given assurances that Island Timberlands “is not going to log along the Eagle (Lois) River at this time”. That means likely not this year. This will give proponents of the corridor a little time to work out something that will prove satisfactory for everybody. IT will also leave a buffer for now along the shore from the Eagle River estuary to the log sort, although they will harvest a strip below the haul road and above this oceanfront buffer. We will post the notes on the discussion sometime next week on our website www.sunshinecoast-trail.com on the Land Use Issues link.

The Friends of Eagle River have advocated very diligently in raising this issue in the public’s eye, and have garnered much support for retention of this area in its natural state. They also have worked hard at raising the profile of the Stillwater Bluffs, more IT private forest land with its excellent rock climbing area, and oceanfront access.

Little Sliammon Lake Reroute

Over a month of Tuesdays and Thursdays and Sundays the BOMB Squad (Bloody Old Men’s Brigade) and PRPAWS (Powell River Parks and Wilderness Society) have partnered to carry out a pre-logging plan negotiated with Sliammon First Nation. The engineered cutblock in Sliammon’s woodlot could not avoid impacting the location of the old trail just to the south of Little Sliammon Lake. This popular hiking trail had been cut in the early 1940s by the Smith boys who lived in Wildwood on the farm at the end of Sutherland Street.

A kilometre-long reroute was designed to skirt the cutblock and was relocated just inside the edge of the forest and along the south shore of the lake. At one point the new trail reroute had to cross the new logging road and a corner of the cutblock. The two giant old growth firs that were a highlight of the old trail were retained, as were a handful of other veterans nearby. The block will be replanted this spring.

The reroute of this section of the Sunshine Coast Trail has now been thoroughly cleared, grubbed out, groomed and marked, and signs have been put up. An imposing 22-metre new wooden bridge has been constructed the BOMB Squad. It takes the hiker across a stream feeding into the lake. Sliammon also supported the updating of the old Shangri-La recreation site, with a new shelter, a picnic table, and a swimming dock.

The steady pace of building was dictated by an annual rite of spring for local hikers and visitors from out of town. The fifteenth annual Marathon Shuffle will take place at 8:00 am on Saturday, April 26, and hikers or runners will be treated to this new section of the Sunshine Coast Trail.

Local businesses support the event by donating water, oranges, bananas, apples and cookies that will be available for participants at four stations along the trail from Malaspina Road to Powell Lake. Prizes, and the annual trophy will be awarded at the end of the shuffle at the Shinglemill. (This story appeared in the Peak on April 2, 2008)

Marathon Shuffle

Participants in the fifteenth annual Marathon Shuffle will meet at 8 am on Saturday, April 26, at the Shinglemill parking lot on Powell Lake. There they will carpool and ride to the trailhead at Malaspina Road. At 8:30 am they will hike from the trailhead, back 29 kilometers to the Shinglemill on the well marked and signed Sunshine Coast Trail via Thunder Ridge, Toquenatch, Marathon, Appleton, Sliammon Lakes and Scout Mountain trail sections.

An alternate start for a shorter 12-kilometer hike begins two hours later at 10:30 a.m. at the Wilde (Tomkinson) Road trail intersection six kilometers up from the highway. This section features the new reroute at Little Sliammon Lake, complete with bridge, and picnic site. Over the last couple of months members of PRPAWS, the BOMB Squad, the Trinket Crew and the Powell River Hiking Club have diligently reconditioned, groomed and marked the trail. Members of these organizations will also provide refreshments at the road intersections.

In the past trekkers have taken between six to ten hours to complete the course. Trail runners will finish the distance in a shorter time. The trail is well marked, but hikers participate at their own risk. They need to be in good physical condition, carry raingear, food and sufficient water as well as good, comfortable boots.

This year we will have a cut-off time at the Wilde Road trail crossing. For safety reasons we will ask hikers to take a ride out to the Shinglemill if they arrive at Wilde (Tomkinson) Road after 12:00 noon.

Upon completion of their trek, participants are requested to sign out at the Shinglemill where refreshments will be available. Donations will be gratefully accepted.

If you have been looking for a way to give something back to the folks that build and maintain the trails, it would be great if you could donate the time to sit at the end of the road, handing out oranges and bananas and water, checking off names as they go through. For more information, and to pre-register call Eagle Walz at 604-483-9565, or email him at walz@shaw.ca .

PRPAWS
Box 345
Powell River, BC
V8A 5C2
604-483-9565