Marathon Shuffle Sunday, April 29

For the last month and a half volunteers of the Tuesday and Sunday work parties have spent 150 hours to prepare the 29-km long Shuffle Route on the Sunshine Coast Trail for the 19th Annual Marathon Shuffle.  This event takes place on Sunday, April 29, 2012. A bus is available at the finish line at the Shingle Mill to take you at 8:00 am to the starting line at Malaspina Road. Cost of bus $5.00 - first come, first served. Start of Shuffle 8:30 am. Participants take part at their own risk. Click here to find out more about the Marathon Shuffle, and to register: http://www.clubfatass.com/events/marathon-shuffle


One work party, as the PR PAWS volunteers were working on grooming the trail, the Sunday Hikers were coming through passing here at Dogleg Pond.













Phil, one of the Sunday Hikers expresses his appreciation of having a trail cleared of blow down and groomed for a stroll.

On another Trailday outing Don is making short shrift of a wall of salal.

Jim is taking a breather from running the weed whacker at the Shangri-La swimming dock on Little Sliammon Lake.


















Now you see him, now you don't. No, Jim is not playing hide and seek. One of the many trees that were blown over in two very aggressive March storms pummeling the region fell across the the trail. First we cut the branches, then sawed off the top.

The Shuffle route has never been in better condition with first attention going to cutting out the extensive blow-down that the storms had brought. Many of the fallen trees were decayed and week, but others were vibrant, just in the way of violent gusts. That's the way of the forest. Day in day out.

Once the blow down was bucked and moved out of the way, we began with brushing back vigorously growing salal and salmon berry bushes, so wet leaves would not brush against the boots or running shoes of the Shufflers.

More of the orange-red markers, as well as wooden directional signs, have been put up as well. Additionally, orange arrows have been painted onto the trail at critical locations so as to help hikers and runners navigate the trail.

In the coming months we will carry on cutting out trees that have fallen across the trail. If you know of the location of some blow-down impeding easy hiking please get in touch with us so we can put them on the To Do list.