We got up to Beaupre, QC last Friday after about 10 hours of driving from Ithaca. This involved lots of open highway, a $42 parking ticket in Montreal, rush hour traffic out of Montreal, and virtually impassable roads between Montreal and Quebec City in a snowstorm. But the pizza in Montreal was worth it.
Following the snow that accumulated Friday night, the remainder of our week consisted of packed powder, sunny days, and temperatures between 15-25F. Tracks were firm and blue (bleu) was kicking like it should.
I probably got to ski 3-4 hours per day with a slight bias toward the classic persuasion. Best of all, no death-march ODs. Tuesday had a gruppeto of us tackle the "36 est" backcountry trail that was yet untracked. Some maps have this marked and others don't. Regardless, it's allegedly 1.5 kilometers in length, but feels like 3k since you're slogging through a bunch of deep snow. At the top there's a "Point de Vue" where the snowshoe trails meet up. It's a pretty good view of the St. Lawrence valley. Pictures don't do it justice, but I took a couple anyway. Even though I've skied "Bruno's Bowl" and "Old Bud's Revenge", this was the pinnacle of renegade backcountry action.
The alleged race for this weekend was moved, and we weren't told until we were driving around aimlessly on the Army base in Jericho, VT. We relocated to Prospect Mtn, which was great since it put us several hours closer to Ithaca and had much better snow. Unfortunately they scrapped the 15k skate in favor of <1k sprints. And we didn't get to shoot rifles. It was largely disappointing, in typical USCSA fashion. I didn't try in the "sprint" and skipped out on the elimination brackets in favor of skiing a few loops around the trails. We also decided that we were tired of living like refugees and headed back to Ithaca immediately following the race.
Now for some pictures.
Looking pensive/stupid on trail 11 (the river trail):
The view from the "Point de vue":
Cool guy 80's angled photo. (This was taken by hanging the camera on a branch and using the timer)
Looking back at our tracks on the descent of 36 est:
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