This fall a new logging road was being built above Fiddlehead Farm impacting a part of the SCT’s West Tin Hat Mountain trail section located at around KM 83. This section had to be blocked off during road construction, and reroute for hikers an existing road using Giavanno Mainline was put in place from Fiddlehead Farm to the Giavanno-Spring Lake Junction. In early December blasting and road building was completed – just before the onset of winter.

Since early November PAWS has been working on establishing a permanent reroute around the edge of cutblock FH-044 (Fiddlehead) within the cover of the remaining standing forest. Western Forest Products designed a Wildlife Tree Retention Area (WTRA) which provides a good trail buffer of generally 20m-30m. At the southern end of the reroute there will be a trail management zone in which about a dozen trees will be removed, but it is difficult to visualize what that will look like once the adjacent logging has been completed later this spring. We are crossing our fingers. One day we were joined by two pros from Adept who took care of bucking up a few huge old logs lying across the new route and we thank them and WFP for their contributions. They are very much appreciated. The reroute is finished now. Enjoy it in good health and spirits.

The reroute maps previously posted at both ends of the trail section have also been removed and folks can now hike up or down West Tin Hat Mountain as they had in the past without noticing much change. This reroute accommodates the interests of two important stakeholders in our local working forest: Resource extraction as well as tourism/recreation. Both provide jobs for this community and more and more members of this community are aware of that reality.