Skiing in Canada's Provincial Parks

[MikeK]

I've never done such a thing and I usually save my vacation days for the summer to do canoe or backpack trips. Most of those occur in the Adirondacks but I have dreams of heading to Algonquin or La Verendrye sometime but I got to thinking maybe Canada would be even better to explore in the winter.

Has anyone done any such trips and how might you do one i.e. stay at a hotel and do day trips or are there huts in certain areas? I'd love to do a wilderness trip with a pulk and hot tent but I need to set realistic goals with the wife

Also I'm not quite familiar with Canada but I know you guys also have Crown Land - which doesn't show up under Google maps (only the parks). To me this is less well known but I know that some people do a canoe tripping on Crown Lands and it provides a more rugged, and remote experience than some of the parks do.

We've also talked a little about the Chic-chocs (La Gaspesie? NP) and I'd love to hear more about them, but personally I'd be more interested in those closer to Toronto, Montreal, and QC (closer to me) either big or small.

So please, I beg you my neighbors to the north, add your experiences, wisdom, and most importantly pictures to entice me to go.

PS Actually my dream trip is to go to Yellowstone NP for a week of skiing but it's quite costly. http://yellowstoneexpeditions.com/

[Johnny]

I wish I could help, but I don't know much about it. Wilderness is everywhere here. There's so much skiing opportunities everywhere around, there's not enough days in a year to ski everything. So for me, I don't see the point of going to a Park to ski. It's a XCD paradise here, there's mountains, hills and trails everywhere. Endless forests everywhere. It just takes some time to explore all that wonder... But for a visitor with limited time, parks are a very good place to start...

We usually visit Provincial Parks in the summer. They're all beautiful. I really love our Parks when they're not too crowded. I really like the vibe of National Parks in general... Everything up north is perfect for skiing... Be sure to check Foret Montmorency on your way... Around here, the wife said the XC center at Orford is really cool... As for Gapsesie, it's definitely the place you wanna go. I would ski there all the time if it wasn't for the 8-hour drive...

Just check out SEPAQ.COM for all the skiing activites in our parks... (And please let us know when you'll be around...!)

[hot.dog]

Not much around Toronto. Kolapore trail network around the Collingwood area is a fantastic volunteer run network: (http://www.kolaporetrails.org It's about 90 minutes north of Toronto.

I've never skied in Algonquin, but I've snowshoed and winter camped. Beautiful park, but very little winter infrastructure. You'd be pulling camping gear in, but base camping is excellent. Very quiet.

I hear there are some great hut tours not far outside Montreal, and the Chic-Chocs sound amazing, but that's all second hand knowledge.

[MikeK]

Thanks for the info guys. It need not be a park, but like I say, I'm not familiar with where the Crown lands are, and what may be skiable. Or a large private tract that is legal to ski (we don't really have much of those here in the states).

A hut trips sounds exactly like what I'd want to do. I've mentioned them to my wife before and she kind of seemed like she was open to it. She didn't seem so excited about skiing with her backpacking pack on though (especially down hills).

What we do now in the Adirondacks is just stay at a hotel somewhere and day trip ski - we don't have huts, only lean tos and they are colder than tents! That's fun too if we went to an area that had fun terrain to ski and we knew what we were doing.

Chic-chocs are so far for us - but it's a must do someday.

I'd totally do a trip in Algonquin with a pulk but that's something I'd have to do on my own or with someone else.

[MikeK]

PS Welcome to this crazy forum hot.dog! I love the avatar haha!

[hot.dog]

Thanks. Been lurking around for a while. Most crown land in Ontario is pretty far north. There's this tool: https://www.ontario.ca/rural-and-north/ ... licy-atlas It's a little tricky, but you may get some use out of it. Most of Southern Ontario is farmland, or was logged in the past century. The area around Kolapore is your best bet for skiable land. I've spent a lot of time rock climbing in the area, but haven't explored it on skis. Lots of motels around the area. A good central town would be Collingwood (big and busy) or Thornbury (quiet in winter).

This is where some work friends did a hut tour a few years back: http://www.sepaq.com/rf/pal/index.dot?language_id=1 Looks cool, reservations required for the huts.

Cheers

[MikeK]

Cool - Papineau-Labelle looks like it could be fun and it's only 6hrs from home. 5 days I'd ski all 100k of trails no problem.

[bgregoire]

Hey MikeK,

So you guys got a good amount of snow today? Sounds like it was real nasty round LJ's area but nothing here up north. Damn cold and nice and sunny.

I don't want to crash of LJ's party but I party disagree about his statement that Quebec is XCD paradise. Now I to agree that that may be a fact for southern Québec, particularly the south-east round the border where you got a ton of mountains and deciduous forests. Perfect for teleing round the big maples and such. XCD paradise for sure. However, further north you have the St-Lawrence plains, which is quite densely populated, very agriculural and mostly flat. Outside of skiing fields, you have a lot of maple forests that can be real nice to XC thru. This is XC paradise, or kite or paraski paradise (large vacant fields of frozen lakes), not much xcD. Now further north, you got the boreal forest, now this is the real stuff people from the south dream about, the canadian WILDERNESS. Forests are predominantly coniferous, and that means DENSE, real dense (other than the few areas that have been cleared for some downhill fun). Mostly, i'd say this is snowshoe paradise. but you can ski anywhere were the forest has been cleared: roads and paths, etc.

Well, if your into the hut to hut thing, well Québec really has a lot to offer, probably the best on the eastern side of north america. Most of their parks are in the boreal forest. SEPAQ has a lot to offer in terms of hut to huts even though they may not always offer the wildest of experiences. Several hut tours also come with the option of bag delivery which might be great for you. I would avoid papineau label if it requires 6 hours of driving to get there. its really flat and pretty boring skiing. the huts are often pretty souless as well. Try the sepaq near tremblant, or the one in saguenay (http://www.sepaq.com/pq/sag/) or les mont-valins. Better yet, le sentier des murailles (http://www.coop4temps.com/murailles/accueil.htm) or la traversée de charlevoix (http://www.traverseedecharlevoix.qc.ca/ ... 0angl.html).

Ciao!

[MikeK]

Oddly enough I think your boreal forest is somewhat what we have in a lot of the Adirondacks. It really is different but some of it so densely tree'd it's impossible to ski unless there is a trail. We had tons hardwoods too (like southern Quebec and Vermont, but I think more wild these days). Birch is actually not as common as you might think and usually is only grows in areas where there were fires (It cannot grow in the normal dense hardwood/coniferous forest that were once there).

If fact I often think of that place as lowland spruce swamps which are dense, soggy and impassible most of the year.



Lakes, low mountains of hardwoods that are often so rocky they aren't very skiable and giant peaks with only the scars of slides showing a place to ski - this shows the typical dense krumholtz taking over the dense hardwoods going up in elevation:



I'll check out those links. The site is pretty non-descript for me so I'm mainly just looking at the trail maps (which don't tell me a lot). The thing I saw on the other is that they were marked but un-groomed, which is similar to the trails in the Adirondacks. I love wild areas - so I don't really want a watered down touristy experience if I do go.

[MikeK]

la traversée de charlevoix (http://www.traverseedecharlevoix.qc.ca/ ... 0angl.html).

Ciao!

Ben,

This is my DREAM trip! Thanks so much for showing me. Now I just have to convince my wife to do this next February instead of going to Florida for a week!