For the community, by the community: Part of McIntosh Run Trail System open for the summer (4 photos)

While the work is far from over, mountain bikers, hikers, and runners can still enjoy part of the McIntosh Run Trail System this summer.

The network of multi-use trails is the pet project of the McIntosh Run Watershed Association, a group that advocates for the conservation of the McIntosh Run river and its surrounding areas.

The project to build a trail system connecting the suburb of Herring Cove to the community of Spryfield has been in the works for around eight years – though Lawrence Plug, chair of the association’s trails committee, told HalifaxToday.ca that the idea had been around for much longer.

“The vision of having a back country-style trail system along the river has been around since 1996, 1997,” he said. “But it’s now coming to fruition.”

The last few years have been spent planning, holding consultations, and getting land use permissions. Actual construction began in 2016.

Right now four kilometres are officially open to the public, with another two kilometres opening within the next couple of weeks.

Eventually, the McIntosh Run Watershed Association intends to open 28 to 30 kilometres of trails.

The single-track trails are between 50 and 100 centimetres wide, and are made of natural local materials like rocks and dirt. Small trenches drain water from the trails on rainy days, and natural ramps have been built for mountain bikers out of large, smooth rocks and packed dirt.

“We have really amazing terrain here,” said Plug, adding the trails show off the biodiversity in the area, spanning forests, rivers, rocky terrain, and marshland.

He hopes the project will help the community connect with nature.

“One of the motivations for doing the single-track project is that it develops more stewards of the watershed,” he said. “It brings people into the watershed on trails that are sustainable and have minimal environmental impact.”

The trail system is being built by a rotating group of around 150 volunteers, made up of association and community members, who spend their weekends and evenings hauling rocks and digging up dirt.

Plug said around 4,000 volunteer hours have been spent on the project so far.

He said it’s hard to say when the full trail system will be complete, but estimated that it will be at least another couple of years.

“Because it’s all done by volunteers, it depends on the human horsepower available to get the work done,” he said.

Many of the trails in the Spryfield area already existed as informal trails and have been upgraded by the volunteers to improve safety by putting in drainage systems and replacing or adding structures like bridges and boardwalks.

They’ve also added signage, indicating the length and difficulty of the trails.

Plug said the use of these trails has tripled since the project began, adding the group has gotten lots of positive feedback from the community and the city.

“Halifax needs more opportunities for outdoor active recreation,” he said. “If you compare Halifax to other cities of a similar size, Halifax could use more single-track, back country-style trails.”

He said the network of trails can also boost the economy by bringing in tourists and attracting more people to live in Halifax.

“Single-track trails are economic engines. They’re a way of taking wild, back country areas that you want to preserve anyway and making them economic engines,” he said.

“One of the ways that you attract and retain highly educated people in the technical fields, the medical fields, is by providing infrastructure amenities like this.”

The McIntosh Run Watershed Association’s top priority is connecting the trails in Herring Cove to the trails in Spryfield, which Plug hopes to have done by the end of the year.

An interactive map of the trail system can be accessed through the association’s website.

Some years ago, the association also built a wider, flatter and stroller-accessible community trail in Spryfield.