Trip Report 2/27-3/2

[Sled Dog]

Another great trip in Quebec. Good friends and good miles!

Day 1, 220 miles.

RDL to Matane. 5 all the way. Trails were great. Had snowed Friday and Saturday before we got there. Had a solid hiccup early in the trip around 10:00. Right after the relais at Trois Pistole, missed the left hand turn for 5, no problem, cut through the deep snow to the trail. First sled (me) makes it, second makes it, third makes it but hits a rock slightly, 4th sled was turning and hit the same rock, lots of damage. Yamaha Apex. Bent the a arms so that the ski was almost twisted under the sled. We decided to go back to Trois Pistole relais station. Tried bending the a arms using a bar and heat and got them pretty good but sled was still messed up and we were only 50 miles into trip!!! After much thinking and phone calls, a guy at Trois Pistoles would drive the sled in his pickup to Mont-Joli Yamaha dealer. We continued on with the other 4 sleds and met him at the dealer. Dealer was great, P. Labonte et files. They took parts off a new sled to fix ours. When it was all said and done, it cost a father $1400.00 to fix the sled for his son!!! But what are you gonna do, trip must go on! What a Dad! At the end of the day, we still made our final destination with 5 working sleds.

Day 2, 310 miles.

Matane to Perce. 5 to 597 to 5. Long day. The trails were again great but the Murdochville area had lots of snow. I had my GPS out for a short while and we were seeing elevation changes of 18 feet to 1800 feet...in a matter of minutes!! Pretty cool. First time I've seen 2 groomers working together. 1 plowing the snow with no drag and the other with a drag behind it. We filled up in Murdochville and there was a groomer there. He said they had gotten 3 feet of snow over the weekend and he had just opened up part of 597. When we got where he had turned around, it was single track. Pretty fun going off into the fresh powder!!

Day 3, 265 miles.

Perce to Pointe-a-la-Croix. Pretty uneventful day.

Day 4, 225 miles.

Pointe-a-la-Croix to Amqui. 5 to 587 to 5. Trouble starting a Yamaha, changed out the fuel relay and off we went. Also had a Yamaha blow a belt which took a while to clear out. 2 of the Yamaha's blew belts...not normal for them in my experience. 587 was amazing! Great trail. At at the Albertville clubhouse, left a note for Groomer. Waitress said she would call him but we didn't want to bother him, he needs his rest for grooming!!! Rode some of the trails around Amqui, fabulous!

Day 5, 220 miles.

Amqui to RDL. 5 to 591 to 587 to 579 to 5. We really wanted to find the "ghost trees". We found em and they were very cool!! I highly recommend this sight. I posted pics of these on my facebook page and got lots of "likes"!!! Made it back to truck at decent hour and loaded up. Bittersweet day, tired of snowmobiling but I didn't want it to end either!!!

All in all, I'd say 95% of trails were excellent. The other 5% would be considered excellent here in Central NY!!! I think we did luck out kind of. We crossed a road and there had to be a couple mile long, straight trail with a slight up hill. Easily a 100mph trail. I could see at the top some lights flashing so I only did about 40 mph up to the lights which were indeed police. They had some sleds pulled over and seemed to be either writing trail permits or tickets. When we went through, they checked our permits and waved us on. In the bar at RDL we saw a news bit on sledding and excessive speed and how they were cracking down. Not sure if what we saw was a speed trap or permit check.

Done for the year, supposed to be 60 here on Wednesday. Ended the year with over 2800 miles on new 2012 Renegade X 1200. Not even a hiccup! 277 local miles, the rest Quebec. Thanks QR for all the info you guys provide!