GuelphToday reader Bill Summers shares his story of an adventure skiingi in eastern Quebec
We travelled across Quebec and up the Gulf of St Lawrence to the village of Saint-Anne-des-Monts, from which we turned inland towards the eastern peaks of the Chic Choc Mountains.
We parked at La Boussole and from there we started a magical ski tour that took us deep into the mountains of eastern Quebec.
Over the course of five days, eight of us stayed at three mountain cabins, and explored this beautiful terrain.
It is definitely hilly with most days seeing us gain or lose over 500 metres of elevation and taking us as as high as 920 metres at the scenic lookout of Pic de l'Aube. From this vantage point we could see the Gulf of St Lawrence and the higher peaks of the region off to the east. Though the Chic Chocs are treed to the top, those off to the east had barren summits.
This region gets a lot of snow and at the higher elevations the trees were covered in heavy snow leading to all types of imagined characters.
During our five days we travelled about 75 km, on trails that were sometimes summer roads and at other times twisting tracks through the woods. One of our most magical days was a day we got off trail exploring lakes, marshes and skiing through the woods.
Typically this area, with its proximity to the moist Gulf of St Lawrence, gets little sun, but in our case we had some sun every day. The temperature was quite reasonable, ranging from -2 C to -16 C, though the sun on the one day did cause the snow to become quite sticky.
Lots of fun, and great to see another part of this beautiful country of ours, prior to the COVID-19 lockdown. For this trip we used back country skis that are much wider then normal cross country skis, and we used skins to climb the many hills along the way.
