Hopefully you had time to renew in nature during our break from meetings this summer. July and August zipped by for your busy club executive, who juggled a range of tasks — some planned and others on the fly, like tackling the massive Manitoba Maple downed by a storm at the Macnamara trailhead.
Some of the executive looked after trail clearing, signage and tour while others undertook a preliminary reworking of the constitution, creating a code of ethics in nature and exploring contributions of club material to the Arnprior & McNab/Braeside Archives.
The heavy summer rain and storms took a toll on the Macnamara Trail, starting with our highly anticipated June 27 club walk of the planned extension. A sudden change in the forecast tied to a severe thunderstorm warning led us to cancel the event. Our apologies to those who were affected by the late cancellation, including our trip leader, Michael, who drove two hours to get there.
A week later, we had to close the trail for two days due to the downed, multi-stemmed Manitoba Maple at its entrance. A large branch landed on the kiosk making it dangerous to walk under it.
Club members John McEwen and Vern Seligy put their chainsaws to considerable work clearing the entrance. The duo later returned to clear other downed branches and trees further along the trail. Thanks as well to Andy Fierens of Mr. Chipper for responding so quickly to our call and for his offer of help when we do our fall trail maintenance. We now have piles of wood chips to spread on the trail!
We also added “No Camping” and “No Fires” signs to the entrance.
Did you know that the Ontario Power Generation (OPG) had donated $5,000 to our trail extension project? Janet Mason and Maureen Carrier hosted the OPG president and other OPG executives at the Macnamara Trail on July 27 to show them where the trail extension will go and how the funds they donated will be used. We’ll update members further at our September meeting.