McIntosh Run Trails

McIntosh Run Trails is Halifax's community-built singletrack network: 27 kilometres (and growing) of hiking and mountain-bike trail woven through the McIntosh Run watershed between Spryfield and Herring Cove, a fifteen-minute drive from downtown. The McIntosh Run Watershed Association (MRWA), a volunteer association, designs, builds and maintains the whole system with help from riders, hikers, runners and local businesses, and the trails have become both the city's best mountain biking and one of the most accessible ways to walk the granite barrens of the Purcell's Cove Backlands. For other city-edge trail options, see our guides to Long Lake Provincial Park and Crystal Crescent Beach.

The terrain is the draw. The network rides and walks across exposed granite barrens, rolling, rippled rock that Halifax Trails likens to "dryland surfing over petrified ocean swells", stitched together with boardwalks, banked berms, ladder bridges and granite slab rides. Habitat along the system includes broom crowberry moorland, osprey, jack pine and wetland pools, and the association's whole founding logic is conservation through use: more people on the trails means more people speaking for the watershed in its natural state.

The Network: 27 km and Climbing

The numbers come from the association itself. Twenty-seven kilometres of singletrack exist today; about 21 km built since 2016 under the McIntosh project, plus 6 km of adopted older informal trails. Phase 2, begun in late 2022, adds roughly 16 km more (closing loops, connecting more neighbourhoods), with the first 3 km (Boulderama, Gutterball, the Orange Jelly extension) opened in fall 2023 and the newest trail, YIMBY ("Yes In My Backyard"), opening in August 2025. The long-range vision is a network reaching from Spryfield to Herring Cove. The MRWA's annual Granite Fondo, a social mountain-bike ride with a post-ride BBQ staged in September, doubles as the network's flagship community event and fundraiser.

• The Attic (3 km loop, difficult): The signature loop at the heart of the system: sheets of rolling granite, small ledges, open sightlines, thrilling descents. Hiking Project ranks it the #1 hike in its McIntosh Run area and #1 in Nova Scotia.
• Duck 'n Run (2.5 km, difficult): The remote backcountry connector — wetlands and granite barrens deep in the Backlands, completing the link between the Norawarren Drive trailhead and the core system.
• Clark Kent (under 1 km, easy): The north-end beginner trail near Williams Lake Road — linear, mostly flat, following a scenic brook. The place to warm up or learn.
• Nora & Warren (stacked loops, easy/intermediate): 600 m and 300 m loops with banked turns and banked boardwalks, straight off the Norawarren Drive trailhead via the 500 m In-N-Out flow section.
• West Pine (2 km, intermediate): Boardwalks, bridges and the West Pine Island Pond (a wetland Ducks Unlimited Canada designates one of Nova Scotia's Treasured Wetlands) plus The Notch, an optional black-diamond pitch with an easier way around.

Hiking a System Built for Bikes

The trails are built to mountain-bike standard, and hiking them is its own distinct pleasure: you walk up banked berms, across ladder bridges and over granite slabs designed for suspension. Hikers and trail runners are explicitly welcome (the association's rule is trails-for-all, trails-by-all), but the practical reality is a shared trail. Etiquette says bikes yield to hikers, yet sightlines on descents are short, so the working rule is ears open, head up, and step aside when you hear the freewheel. Fourteen "hike & seek" art-panel stations along the Norawarren Drive loops make the southern end genuinely family-friendly, with activity prompts for kids at each station. In winter, the granite stays rideable and walkable in all but the iciest spells, and snowshoeing is an established use.

The Backlands and the River

The network sits inside the Purcell's Cove Backlands, one of Halifax's wildest urban landscapes — a mosaic of granite barrens, jack pine moorland, bogs and black spruce that has resisted development precisely because it is so rugged. The McIntosh Run itself, the river the watershed association was founded to protect in 1994, threads the system; its pools and riffles are the reason the trails exist at all, since the association's founding purpose was stream protection and the trails are its tool for building a constituency for the river. From high points on The Attic the open rock delivers long views across the barrens toward the coast at Herring Cove — sunsets here are a quiet local ritual.

Practical Information

Trailheads & Parking
Four main access points, all in residential neighbourhoods — keep noise down, don't block driveways, park on one side of the street only:

• Osprey Trailhead (recommended): 519 Alabaster Way, Halifax (Governor's Brook) — purpose-built trailhead for the southern system.
• Lions Rink / Captain William Spry Centre, 16 Sussex Street: Parking plus the flat 3–4 m gravel Community Trail link to the network via the Governors Brook bridge.
• Norawarren Drive (Herring Cove Road side): Direct access to In-N-Out, Nora, Warren and West Pine.
• Hartlen Park / Lois Lane and Drysdale Road (north end): Clark Kent access; very limited street parking.

Transit
Halifax Transit routes 9A/9B (Greystone/Herring Cove) run down Herring Cove Road past the access points; most buses carry two bikes on front racks. Williams Lake Road or Drysdale Road for the north trails; Norawarren Drive or Mica Crescent for the core.

Difficulty & Trail Style
Green (easy) through black features. Singletrack means narrow: the width of one biker or hiker. E-bikes and all motorized use are prohibited under the land-use agreements.

Season & Conditions
Year-round. Granite drains fast and The Attic is "90% good in all weather" per trail write-ups; expect muckholes after rain on the connector trails. Nova Scotia's wildfire-season burn ban (no open fires 8 a.m.–2 p.m. daily) applies to the Backlands.

Amenities
None on the trails: no washrooms, no water, no food. Bring what you need; the shops are back in Spryfield or Herring Cove.

Cost & Maps
Free. The official maps live on Trailforks (search McIntosh Run); the association sells Trail Tags ($ suggested donation) to fund materials and trail crews — 100 percent of tag payments go to trail building and maintenance.

Dogs
Allowed; leashed per city rules in these areas, and keep them close on shared singletrack.

The McIntosh Run trails are the rare urban network that feels genuinely wild ten minutes from a city bus route. Ride the granite if you ride; walk it if you don't — but go, because twenty-seven volunteer-built kilometres this close to downtown is a thing worth using, and using it is how it survives.