Sunday, November 16th,
The Musquodoboit Muffin. Distance is approximately 19 km, and 700 m elevation gain, with about 11km of technical wilderness singletrack, and 8km of flat railtrail.
Start is at 9 am at Crawford's
Falls/SilversPool. Registration is on the morning
of, and closes at 8:30 at the start/finish line. Registration is $20 cash, and waivers must be signed at registration.
There is a four hour(1pm) cutoff at about the fifteen km mark. This is the intersection of Gibraltar (south exit) and the rail trail. I fast walked the 4.2 km railtrail section together with the 10 km North Ridge trail with many stops, within four hours. The reason for a cutoff time is for safety concerns, since sunset will be at 4:45 pm, having runners finish within daylight hours.
There is parking on both sides of the bridge. There are no facilities at the
start/finish. The start finish location is on Highway 357 (aka Meagher's
Grant Rd) approximately 13km from the Musquodoboit Harbour Library. Coordinates of the start/finish are: 44.872673, -63.220254.
The are no feed stations on the trail. All runners must have at minimum a
pack, a rain shell, a fully charged mobile phone, snacks and water. I highly recommend at least two hundred calories of snacks, and two litres of water. Several streams are accessible on the ten km wilderness trail. If you plan on drinking stream water, carry a portable filter or treatment tablets. Do not drink this water unfiltered as there are beaver dams at the source of this stream!
The trail is marked with the existing red metal tags on trees (a few fallen).Blue flagging tape, and volunteers will be at intersections to give direction.
As usual there
are no awards or prizes for this event. There are muffins at the finish.
If you have not run this trail before you are in for a real treat, but
please be aware of the extreme technical and physical demands especially
of the middle10km section. It may sound shortish but the distance is
compounded by all steep ascents and descents and numerous hops skips and
jumps between boulders, and over roots. There are no flat straight
sections in this segment of the trail. Trail specific running shoes are
highly recommended. .
