INNISFAIL – With COVID still bearing down hard, citizens starved for travel can still leap over provincial boundaries to take a wonderful adventure-filled holiday.
It’s all virtual but with today’s advanced technology participants can still see the many spectacular sights, go outdoors and get badly needed exercise. It promises to be a super health boost for the body, mind and soul.
For the second time since late last year, the Town of Innisfail, through a creative initiative from the staff at the Innisfail Aquatic Centre, is offering the 180-kilometre Sunshine Coast Trail Virtual Mission from May 31 to Aug. 31. The new mission follows the Sunshine Village Mission, which took about 40 participants virtually along 110 kilometres of mountainous terrain from December 29, 2020 to March 31 this year.
“It was important to keep people healthy, and at the same time safe,” said Ken Kowalchuk, the town’s communications coordinator, of the intent behind the aquatic centre staff’s initiative to create the virtual missions. “Because we don’t have our regular programming in place due to the COVID restrictions this is an opportunity to get people out and get them active.
“And again, they can participate safely.”
The adventure all starts by registering with the town. There is a $45 fee per person to participate in the virtual mission. The fee covers administrative costs and prize packages for all mission participants.
Once they register, they can get an app for free called My Virtual Mission, which is then downloaded to any type of personal tracker that records participant mission distances. Participants can also manually record their distances.
“To put this in basic terms, let’s say they walk 20 kilometres here in Innisfail. When they go on the app it will show they actually walked 20 kilometres along the Sunshine Coast Trail,” said Kowalchuk, emphasizing all participants do have to physically move in order to track the mission distance. They can walk, run and even ride a bicycle.
“This mission is 180 kilometres. By the end of the three months, they will have moved 180 kilometres. It gets people out and active and gets them moving,” he added.
Kowalchuk said there is a virtual component to the app that shows a picture of where they are in the mission, as well as a map to follow their progress along the trail, even after participants have taken a long walk in Innisfail, or rode their bicycle into the countryside.
“When you go to see where you are it will show you where you are,” said Kowalchuk, conceding precise visual viewing of where participants were on their journey was sometimes problematic in the first mission because of some extreme mountainous geography.
“They just didn’t have Google footage of on top of a mountain,” he said. “For this one my understanding is that you will be able to, the same way you would use Google maps, as you can go to that street view and see where you are along the trail.”
With both the first and second missions being three months long, all participants have that amount of time to complete the distances. However, he emphasized it’s up to everyone to figure out their own timeline to complete the 180-kilometres mission. “You are basically committing to walking 60 kilometres a month,” said Kowalchuk.
With one successful mission already in the books, and the town quickly moving toward a second, has talk started to consider a third?
“There is no third one planned yet. We just launched this one now,” said Kowalchuk. “I don’t think it’s so much a case of waiting to see how it goes. We are in the process of executing this one, so we will wait until this one is complete before we start looking ahead to the next one.”
For citizens interested in participating in the Sunshine Coast Trail Virtual Mission he or she can register by calling the Innisfail Aquatic Centre at 403-227-3376 or visit www.innisfail.ca/programs (use code #14163)
