On the way to the Mingan kayak adventure, we had to drive through much that had me pressing my nose to the window, wanting to explore more. Quebec is a whole new world for me: with the exception of some time spent poking around the Gaspe eight years ago, a few Gatineaus explorations on visits to Ottawa, and the occasional work forays to Montreal and Quebec City, I don't know it at all. Now, we were taking a path right through some of the most enticing countryside in Canada. Kid in a candy store applies, definitely.
The only way I could stand sticking to our schedule (here was our schedule: keep well ahead of Sam. Call him every hour or so with updates of where we were, to ensure that we were, in fact, well ahead of him) was to keep coming back to the thought that we will, after all, be coming back. We already had the next adventure planned: after the Mingan Archipelago kayaking trip, we would hike the Traversee de Charlevoix. I loved getting the "what are you doing on your vacation?" question; I would casually toss out "we're going to kayak for 200km, and then we'll hike for 100". It sounded so effortlessly hardcore, like, you know, that's nothing for us, we'll do all of that with smiles on our faces and not realize that we're actually doing stuff that most people never do.
But. Heh. Things never go as planned. The kayak trip turned out to be much, much less difficult than anticipated. But I wasn't upset by that, we were playing it safe, and the measure of a trip is not, after all, its difficulty. Besides, hiking 100 km with packs would be plenty difficult. Heh again.
We left Longue Pointe de Mingan on Sunday after lunch. We had a long way to drive before we could start goofing off again. We drove all the way to Saint Simeon, south of the Saguenay, before crashing in a motel whose ugliness was equaled only by the surliness of its proprietor. Oh, we goofed off a bit, somewhere north of Tadoussac we went out for dinner and wouldn't settle for road food. But there was no wandering on beaches or poking up to roads to Labrador. No, we had a *deadline*. We had to be in St. Urbain on Monday morning. And we needed to buy socks before then! But since this was the trip where Lee and Johanna managed to stay on or ahead of schedule (I'm still weirded out by this. Particularly by Lee: the man was *always* ready before I was. It stressed me out!), we presented ourselves to the Traversee de Charlevoix office at 10:30 a.m.
The weather was great - mix of sun and cloud, and warm. We got our maps, which - though just photocopies of topos with things drawn on them - included elevation profiles and notations on where you could get cell phone reception and drinking water and, for my geo-geek heart, elevation profiles for each day's hiking. The Traversee people were nice, which we particularly appreciated after the surly motel man, and they assured us that we would be the only ones in the shelters, and we would get medals when we finished the hike!
Well, the medals should have tipped me off. If you get a medal for it, it can't be all that great, now, can it, eh? But no, still flushed with getting there on time and it not raining, I faced the trail with unbridled optimism. Our packs were supposed to be light - after all, no tent! - but I took the "I know (my sandals, the rain jacket, long underwear...) is/are heavy, but I *want* it" too far - my pack, though not overly heavy, did not feel "light". We had six days plus a contingency day's worth of food, too. But, whatever, let's go!
The trail started out great. We were doing the first two days in one, since the first official day is only 3 km along a cottage access road. After that, it's 20 km of trail. We began the day hiking along a like, with cliffs across the way. I had visions of jumping off rocks into warm water at some point in the trip, and of course of scenic vistas from the top of said cliffs. So I merrily marched through the boreal forest (Lee also merrily marched, but much faster than I did - he waited for me every now and then. It's a style of hiking "together" that I much prefer to paces that don't match up). After a while of merrily marching, though, it occurred to me that, though I could see glimpses of the cliffs from time to time, I was really just slogging away below the peaks with nary a decent lookout. And the mosquitos were hungry. The citronella had not made the "light pack" cut. Sigh.
And then, Lee (bastard!) hardly ate anything for lunch, so eating didn't make my pack any lighter. And then we slogged some more, stopping only for short breaks to refill the water bottles. I for one was happy to see the 2 km and 1 km markers (they count down the distance to the next shelter for you). Except, just as we get to the 0 km marker (in theory), we hear the telltale bzzz-bzzzz-bzzzzt of a massive hydro corridor. And we're right under it. But no fear, *our* shelter (the "refuge", as opposed to the "chalet" - the Traversee maintains both types of shelter) ws another 1.4 km away! Not only that, but that 1.4 km was mostly swamp, including a beaver dam. The shelter itself was on a higher hump of land in the middle of the swamp. Our water source wasn't, it was a swampy bog. And the mosquitos were having a family reunion.
Ah, but none of this I would have minded if the day's hike had included more views and less hydro corridor. And if I could have walked into the shelter and flopped. As it was, it was occupied when we got there. Traversee snafu as per usual, I gather - the couple inside was also assured that they would be the only ones there. Not a big deal, they were nice, but it made the flopping part somewhat less natural. Turns out, though, that spending the evening talking with these two was the highlight of the trip, since they were so much fun. But...
...Lee had reached similar conclusions as I had about the ratio of slog:view. We concurred that we might as well put packs on and walk in circles through the back 40 of the farm, for all we were seeing. So we pulled out the maps, and really looked at the trail for the rest of the week. Conclusion: one day of views. Five days of boreal forest close-up inspection (Lee: "so, now that you've hiked for 100 km here, what do you think of the boreal forest?" "it's mixed"). Hydro corridor much of the way. Not only that, but the vast majority of "trail" is actually logging road and service road for the hydro corridor. Nice.
So. When you only have so much time off, do you want to spend it slogging without views? I was willing to do so if Lee wanted to, and I would have been in an okay mood about it. However, Lee is sane. He proposed backtracking. I wanted to hike out on the next access road, and get the Traversee people to shuttle the car. We decided to try and find a working cell phone (my Rogers phone gets no reception here, Lee has Bell Mobility but his battery was dead) and check out this option. To this end, we went to the nearby chalet, and got lucky. We left a message at the Traversee office, and off we stomped along more logging roads.
We got out, with perfect timing. We were on the lost side on the network of logging roads, and started down one road which felt *all wrong* to me. Never mind that I couldn't really have an innate sense of where we should be in a place I've never been, it just was. Lee humoured me, and I scored my big point of the day when the first car we encountered on the road that I wanted to take was a red jetta with two kayaks on it! Yippee, the slog was over.
But bailing on a trip you've been looking forward to requires a bit of reflection. We hadn't done our homework, no doubt we could have done a bit of research to find out about the logging road vs. trail, dense canopy vs. view and hydro corridor vs. backcountry feel issues. No doubt we could have continued, and knowing the sort of people we are, we would have enjoyed that too. Likely, the one day of great views that we didn't do would have been worth the weight of the pack and then some.
However. It's supposed to be fun. We would have had to work to make it fun. We've both done enough adventures that we didn't really need the sense of completion of finishing a trail we felt was a bit pointless (if you're hiking it, in August). There was much for us to do outside the woods (Lee's girlfriend has been nagging him about the front yard, I wanted to get to my garden). We'd been outside our lives for 11 days at that point, and we were still speaking to each other. No sense pushing it: we ended the vacation on a good note, and I for one have no regrets. We visited a couple of brew pubs, we ate some great food, we hung out with friends of mine in Kingston for the night, and we got home much earlier than expected. All good.
The Traversee de Charlevoix would be a fantastic cross country ski trail, and a fun mountain bike trail. The chalets and huts are charming log cabins with cute wood stoves and tables and benches and sleeping lofts. I could even see hiking this trail in the fall, when there are no bugs, some colours, and a less dense canopy. But, for us, in August, when we were already tired from our other trip, quitting when we did made sense. It just wasn't what we were looking for.
We didn't get the medals.
Posted by Johanna at August 26, 2004 09:27 AM