Landowner Rights & Trail User Responsibilities

The Waskahegan Trail is a unique resource that exists only because of the generosity of landowners. Before you set foot on the trail:

  1. Know the landowner rights and the trail user responsibilities.
  2. Check the trail conditions

Trail Clearing along Bigstone Creek

A48 towards A49

With only 5 workers we split into 2 groups going in on a road allowance from Twp 470 to “B” and 3 workers went west and 2 north. We cleared about 4.5km with chain saws, weed eaters, signing and some clipping.

IMG_2166 (1024x768)

With more people we could have resurrected the blue route at “B” an alternate trail that gets us off of the field and down by the Bigstone Creek again as well we could have cleared a little farther and clipped more. The rain has increased the growth everywhere this year and added to the challenge.

However we did meet with landowner Warren Lyle to get his permission to use the road allowance which is a huge saving in TM efforts; we did not have to go from A48 to A49 6.8km! Thank you!

Trail Maintenance Crew takes a break

North Miquelon 4×4

One cannot hike Miquelon North without being reminded that it was a St. Francis Xavier Biology 30 class that put in the section of Waskahegan Trail from Miquelon Lake Park to just beyond Horseshoe Lake in the 1970s.

To commemorate their St FX posthard work the students, under the guidance of their teacher, Vi Sunohara, student Gary Hnatko, and our Pat Bourque, hauled a sharpened 4×4 post to the highest point on the trail. The students skillfully carved into the post “St FX Waskahegan Lookout.” They also had the foresight to bring the tools required to pound that post deep into the ground.

Some 40 years later, the landmark is still there and we talk about the great citizenship shown by the St. FX students and their teacher. (As evidenced by the Waskahegan Trail Guidebook: Our Millennium Edition (2001, p. 136), the students made quite an impression: “In line with the friendly bantering that went on between the class and Pat Bourque, the Waskahegan coordinator, Pat suggests that the sign on the hill should have read “St. FX Look Out!”

As we walked the trail, we imagined what a great education those students had so many years ago as they travelled the same route. Did they notice the standard summer flowers like the goldenrod, asters, sow thistle and yarrow? Or were they really keen to notice the less obtrusive Indian Pipe and Wintergreen? Were they scared silly by a pair of Ruffed Grouse like Anita and I were? Did they look up occasionally, like we did, and marvel at the zeppelin-like pelicans happily swirling with the wind currents above the lake? And was Erickson’s large culvert (a prominent landmark) still channeling massive amounts of water? Or did it look out of place then, as it does now, in the mostly dry, boggy pasture?

Indian pipe
Indian Pipe
Mushroom
Mushroom
Saskatoon berries
Saskatoon berries
snake
Snake
Ericksons culvert
Ericksons culvert
Foxtails
Mildly boggy pasture

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Back in the day, Miquelon Lake was much nicer for recreation, and the students likely took less time to eat their lunch and more time to frolic in the lake. We, however, were not tempted to go for a dip in the murky, shallow lake of today. As we enjoyed our lunch at a shady spot near the boat launch, we checked out the pictures that Vivian had already taken and gave our own student representative, Marco, the GPS so he could accurately determine our distance travelled.

Miquelon Lake

 

The route back was delightful The wide open meadows were teeming with wildflowers. During the hottest part of the day, we appreciated even more so the generous assortment of mushrooms growing in the cooler shaded areas of the bush.

As we walked along the varied terrain we could not help but appreciate the hard labour of our own trail maintenance crew that, like the kids of so many years ago, still battle large trees fallen across the path, dense slough grass, thistles, large boulders, thick shrubbery, cow patties, huge ant hills and plenty of mosquitoes. We were thankful to be able to hike on a very clear and extraordinarily well-marked trail. Total distance travelled, reported Marco, was 9.9kms.

Group

View these pictures and more on Flickr
2016-07-24 Hike: Miquelon South A86 to A85