Cote Nord Trip 🐳
Trail Day 1, Sunday 8 March
Light showers as we crossed over to Restaurant for breakfast. Our 7am breakfast with time change (spring ahead) became 7:30. Snohorse takes the long way to detour to get a closer look at the carnage at the pump. Rain is on and off but we aint rolling off like that.
We enjoy our breakfast and watch it rain ever so lightly. More coffee mmm, conversations and weather discussions. No hurry. All good. We return to hotel around 8:45.
Launch is delayed for one hour, radar shows snow pushing in, we will wait it out. Got all day and extra daylight that we will not need.
9:20 snow is mixed with rain. Soon its big flakes of snow. Then more reasonable snow is on now.
We still have the toys in the box. Sleds slept in trailer last night. Colder for sure since breakfast. According to radar, Snow won’t last long, but will be messy for an hour or so. Wet snow on shields.
Hoping as we gain elevation this all is different.
Outside unloaded and out back trail from hotel at 9:48. Snow sticks to shield, constant wiping it seems. Trail is nice its not crazy soft or mushy. Pretty solid. My two friends Bobby and Josee pulled out at 9:30 they are only tracks i see. Either direction on fresh frosted trail. TQ3 west direction Relais Bouleaux Blancs.
Amazing ride like always here. Maybe a KM before Relais, I catch two headed up. Close to Relais so I wait. They pull in but, i see no sleds here. Stop for a picture and the two guys go on. Ok. 👍
Arrive at TQ3 junction Local trail (pel chat) they split first straight up second guy left down TQ3. First guy brakes and without hesitation begins backing up down middle of trail. Interesting.
All good we are clear and hammering down up to 330 before arriving at junction large group coming from chalets for sure 8-10 sleds with toboggans. Headed out. We move on. To the 330 pel chat trail junction. We go right 330. Snow no longer sticks to shield it is tapering off. Direction Portneuf sur mer. Beautiful run to Portneuf sur mer and TQ3 saw another sled on TQ3 but its been 125km since last traffic. Gas in Portneuf sur mer. Wheels needed. But trails fine. It got melty here too but will be fine. Road crossing and parking lots it’s march people. Sun is high and lot’s of it.
Onward to Forestville. Great run up. See two more sleds going down. As we arrive in Forestville. Here we head out and run up the local Canyon trail. Ripping here. Two sleds in front of me much slower. They see me quickly and nice big trail lots of places for them to safely yield way. NHmoose reports smelling hyfax. 10-4 i stop and deploy scratchers, Snohorse deployed one side. No more issues. Trail was loosening up, We roll on. We take left fork direction Chenail du Nord. Further up trail splits. Un-groomed to Chenail. But grooming to the left. Gotta go till we cannot. So we do. Cool trail nice views. Mrs will like it up here she never been up here. Big views, and looks like potentially another river for her to paddle here. At the end of the grooming we went just a little further.
Will say deep and soft where not groomed. Not easy to turn around but we extracted ourselves from the situation. Getting warm now sun peeking a bit some hints of blue sky. Backtrack to left turn on Local trail past relais, then close loop joining back on local trail we went up on.
Back to TQ3. Into gas and depaneur, (wheels)then to Danube Blue(wheels). Only 5 rooms rented tonight. We have 2. No other sleds.
Very aware tomorrow will be warm again, then we have potential meteorological activity that could affect progression. Time will tell.
In the meantime we will carry on.
If we need to recalculate we will.
Tomorrow the forecast will be more solid and we will plan accordingly.
So far so good.
Just gonna send it
Stay tuned!
By
iceman ·
