Shuttle Da' Mice!

Shuttle Da' Mice!

So who wants to spend a morning / afternoon shuttling the Mice? There are several reasons that I need to do this, and enlist your help in doing so…

1) I need to complete a bunch of lines in the 3 Blind Mice for a book I'm wrapping up

2) The GPS tracks we record, as well as what I have on hand already – will be immediately and freely passed along to both the local Ambulance service and Penticton Search & Rescue; to aid them in locating / pulling cats out who bail hard. Spoke with the ambulance attendant onsite for Terry's accident, and it turns out that it was a real bugger to find him in the mice-maze a few weeks back.

3) It'll be the basis for a free, accurate and up-to-date ‘Mice' trail-map which I'll provide at no charge to both bike shops and Peach City Runners. I'll also post a downloadable – full-on 3D / pan / tilt / zoom-able electronic version for Google Earth users on the Cycling Club website; bikepenticton.com

4) The tracks will be donated to aid in the creation of a super-accurate ‘trail-head' map that Freedom Cycle Shop is creating for the area

5) Just because… shuttling the mice, while a really lazy way to do it… is damned fun!

What we need is at least one large (crew-cab or van), or two small vehicles, along with perhaps four or five dudes or gals to do the riding / driving (alternating). Said vehicles need to be tough, as Arawana Rd. (the shuttle route), is a bit rough... to say the least. We pulled off this same gig on Apex Mt. this summer and covered pretty-much every trail on Beaconsfield in one day.

The Mice, on the other hand, is freaking massive… I've been puttering around in there all summer, on and off, between it and the valley-full of other hiking / biking routes – and while I have a number of ‘Mice' routes GPS'd, there are still loads left that I'll likely not get done until the end of next summer at this rate.

Earlier, I put out a call for Mice GPS tracks to amalgamate with mine for this very purpose, as I was sure that others must have run some lines in there, but to no avail / response. I've been speaking with the Penticton Ambulance Service on several occasions and they are chomping at the bit to have the lay of the land in accurate, GPS file format. If we wait till' the Penticton Muni' gets around to it, um… don't hold your breath.

After Terry's accident, rescue services have come to a stunned realization of the complexity of the Mice trail network, as well as the actual volume of traffic that the area sees; and would like to be well-prepared in case something bad goes down in that area again. Logic, statistical analysis and a first-hand look at some of the trails in there tell them that serious injuries are likely to re-occur in the Mice at some point in the future.

So, who's “in”? I have three GPS units, can get my hands on a fourth if need be. We can have a great day of descending, and I'll pop for gas, as well as Beer & Pizza afterward! This is in no way a club event, its more along the lines of a volunteer service – so there is no insurance or implied liability…

Andrew D.

PS: It'd be great to have a few cats along who know their way around in the mice 'by eye' as it'd assist them in following the convoluted old map that is kicking around the net', and thus, realize where they were in order to find exits and areas to navigate to in order to run GPS lines without too much redundancy...