NB/Gaspee lift Served Skiing - Feb 25 - March 3

[ironhippy]

First I will apologize for my crappy cell camera pictures that were taken with very little thought.

If the pictures links break, they should be available here

I started my trip with a powder day at my local hill, Crabbe Mountain which is outside of Fredericton New Brunswick

Day 1 - Wednesday February 25, 2015 - Crabbe Mountain

https://maps.google.com/maps?q=46.124534,-67.108296&num=1&t=h&z=13

http://www.crabbemountain.com/

Woke up with 3 - 4 inches of snow on the ground and forecast for snow all day long.
Crabbe is a decent local hill with about 850 feet of vertical. The best part for me, is they have a liberal tree skiing policy and as long as you leave an open trail and return to an open trail, you can ski anywhere.

First Chair up, gonna be a good day

Untracked glades... can't wait!

Untracked Harolds Fun Run, top section of trail

Untracked "headwall" on Harolds

From the bottom.

At this point my friend and his brother showed up and I (mostly) stopped taking pictures.

Here is the view from the bar at lunch time

Last Chair

The dog and I are ready to travel!

To the Gaspee! (to be continued...)

 

[ironhippy]

That night I drove 4ish hours to Campbellton New Brunswick.

Entering the Gaspé Peninsula

I drove 2 hours to a town called Amqui

On the left you can see the ski hill Val D'Irene

Day 2, Day 3 and Day 4 - Val-d'Irène, QC

https://maps.google.ca/maps?q=Val-d...=0.314641,0.697632&oq=val+d'&t=h&z=16&iwloc=A

http://www.val-direne.com/

View from beside the lodge.

View of the North Side

This is a neat little hill with some steep sections on the north side. It is normally only open Fri - Sun, but since Quebec's holiday weekend was coming up, they opened on Thursday. They got about half a foot of snow from Sunday night - Thursday, so there was a fair amount of fresh snow to find.

The north side does not have a lift, it has a bus that isn't always running. You buy a punch card and the driver punches the card each time you get on the bus.
There is also a place they call "Zone Blanche" which is hike to terrain, but is unpatrolled and since I was by myself, they wouldn't sell me a ticket to it (it was a 5 dollar pass). My reaction was filmed (NSFW) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sH-2f4n92Qw

The first day the bus wasn't running, so I stuck mostly to the gladed trails on the front side

The second day, the northside opened up. It was odd though, when I bought my ticket, there were signs saying it was closed (in French) and at the top of the lift the sign for the northside stated it was closed. I skied until 11:15 or so and noticed the sign changed from closed to Open 10:00 - 14:15. I made a bee line to the ticket office (first groomed run of the trip) and bought my bus pass.

Searching for fresh tracks in the glades

They had some steep sections that were partly untouched

My original plan was to drive to Murdochville on Saturday morning, but after talking to a nice couple on the lift, I found out the one hotel in Murdochville was booked for Saturday night and since I didn't make a reservation, that killed my plans. I decided to stay an extra day and travel on Sunday.

But I found some stashes

Some more.

From the tower at the top of the hill, you can get a glimpse of what makes the Gaspe amazing, the Chic Choc massif.
Unfortunately I would not be doing any skiing beyond the lifts, but it made me want to get in proper shape and come back.

My dog was sorry to have to leave the Motel Des Cedres

Sunday rolled around, I got up early and started to drive east.

 

[VTKilarney]

I love trip reports from unique places like this!

 

[ironhippy]

I drove along the North Shore of the Gaspe, at first all you see is the Saint Lawerance

Then you start getting to the mountains

After much driving I turned south into the heart of the mountains and an old mining town called Murdochville. Now that the mine has closed down, there doesn't seem to be much in the way of economic activity.

First glimpses of Ski Mont Miller, the Murdochville ski hill.

Day 5 - Ski Mont Miller - Murdochville Que

View from the lot

https://maps.google.ca/maps?q=ski+m...30457&sspn=1.252048,2.790527&t=h&z=16&iwloc=A

http://skimontmiller.com/

Mont Miller is old school, it has a single T bar that runs to the lower summit. There is the remnants of a lift that went to the main summit, but that has since fallen into disrepair, requiring a hike to the steepest terrain.

This is the hike, I skated as much as possible and then slowly hiked up and it took me about 15 minutes, it could be done quicker for someone in better shape and more appropriately dressed. I kept slowing down/stopping to avoid sweating.

One great thing about the wind is that although it hadn't snowed in 4-5 days, there was plenty of fresh snow to ski due to the wind blowing all the tracks back in

View of the old mine, you can see the above treeline mountains in the distance

Untracked glades

This was by far the best run I had the whole trip. It was fresh the whole way down, I'm not sure why no one had skied it yet that day. I tried to hit it again right afterwards and 3 snowboarders had been down just after me, it still skied great, but I was hoping to track it out myself.

Murdochville is the base of operations for http://www.chic-chac.ca/en/home/
I remember thinking about how they offered heli skiing and thought "well obviously they get the helicopter from Quebec City or something" but then the next morning when I was walking my dog I proved myself wrong.

Chic-Chac helicopter and Snowcat

But all good things must end and although I had originally planned to spend two days in Murdochville, there was one more place I wanted to ski and my legs were really starting to take a beating from all the skiing.

 

[thetrailboss]

Very, very cool reports! Gives me something to read over and digest!

 

[ironhippy]

Monday Morning I headed south to a place called Pin Rouge, but first I had to take a slight detour through the National Park of Gaspe. Unfortunately it was snowing (but not storming so not really enough to help skiing!), so that made visibility very poor.

The drive from Murdochville to the National Park is about an hour and it is amazing.

https://maps.google.ca/maps?saddr=M...onal+park+gaspe&t=h&mra=dme&mrsp=1&sz=10&z=10

There are seemingly endless areas to explore for ski touring. There is extensive logging activity so there are clear cuts all over the place, then you start getting into the high mountains that go above the tree line.

Unfortunately all my pictures suck and all the best views were on windy roads and since I was already late for skiing, I didn't stop much.
I have spent a fair amount of time hiking in Baxter State Park and in the White Mountains, but this made me regret not coming up there earlier. I do hope to come back and do some hiking in the summer.

http://www.sepaq.com/pq/gas/index.dot?language_id=1

Anyway eventually I went south.

Day 6 - Pin Rouge Que

https://maps.google.ca/maps?ll=48.2...+Touristique+Pin+Rouge&output=classic&dg=ntvo

http://www.pinrouge.com/en/

This is a interesting hill with a really long chair lift. The chair lift is not high speed and it goes on for a LONG time, but it's worth it in the end.. kind of.
My biggest problem with this hill is the lack of glades. They only had a couple of official gladed runs and they were not great, I looked and looked but couldnt' find any evidence of unofficial gladed runs.

The hill has an expert section that I believe once had a lift serving it, you had to skate a bit to get to it.

There was a deer on the lower part of one of the their trails, I tried to avoid him to not spook him, but then some people blew by me and sent him flailing into the woods.

The snow most scraped off most of the their steeper trails making them difficult to ski

view from the bottom part of one of their steep trails

And that is all I've got from there! I was getting rather tired at this point and was looking forward to heading home. I drove an hour and half back to Campbellton New Brunswick and stayed in the same hotel as on the way up.

I'll finish up with my summary/thoughts and final day at Crabbe on the way home later...

 

[ironhippy]

I love trip reports from unique places like this!

Very, very cool reports! Gives me something to read over and digest!

Thanks guys! Previously my ski trips to Quebec have been to the big resorts around Quebec City, this time I wanted to see what the Gaspe has to offer.

 

[jaytrem]

Great report, thanks for posting!!! Quebec sure has a LOT of ski areas. If anybody s interest this is a good source of info on them...

http://www.bonjourquebec.com/qc-en/...herche=ATTRAITS&seolevel=MAIN&filtreCat=23820

 

[ss20]

They had some steep sections that were partly untouched

Woah, woah, woah! Time out. Where is this??? If that's as good and steep as it looks it's roadtrip time!

 

[WoodCore]

Very nice!! Thanks for posting!

 

[xwhaler]

Very cool report.....landscape looks amazing up there.

 

[dlague]

Cool Report! New perspective on skiing other places besides New England in the East.

 

[ironhippy]

Woah, woah, woah! Time out. Where is this??? If that's as good and steep as it looks it's roadtrip time!

https://maps.google.ca/maps?q=Val-d%...h&z=16&iwloc=A

http://www.val-direne.com/

it's only an 11 hour drive from Connecticut!

That run was good, I went on it again the next day after a lot of other people had been done it and it was scraped down to mostly ice. That made for a terrifying experience of jump turns and sliding. Still lots of fresh snow half way down where it widened out.

 

[ironhippy]

I drove the 4ish hours back to my local hill on Wednesday

Day 7 Crabbe Mountain

I skied for a few hours on my way home, I was pretty beat up at this point and needed to get ready for work the next day

But I found some stashes that no one had skied yet this year

It's been a good year at Crabbe, we didn't get any thawing since Christmas time and we got hit pretty good by most of the east coast storms, it's really been win win as far as conditions go. It has however been very cold, so that has kept the masses away.

This year it was announced the current owners of the hill were selling and would not be operating the hill next year if it sold or not. The current owners own a ski hill a neighboring province, fortunately a group of locals appear to be acquiring it with the intention of running it as a non-profit.

The glade "Rock Drop" at Crabbe Mountain

We got hit pretty hard by the tail end of a hurricane in the summer time and it knocked down a lot of trees on the hill. We cleaned up what we could in the fall and it resulted in some much more open woods skiing in places.


Summary

The goal of this trip was to scout out powder hunts for the future. I fully expected to make it up there earlier in the year, but we kept getting hammered by snow so it didn't make sense to travel for snow.

In a typical year, Amqui will get close to twice as much snow as my city (Fredericton New Brunswick) and Murdochville will get even more snow than Amqui. Both Amqui and Murdochville normally stay below freezing for the bulk of the winter, keeping the entire snow pack and since it's colder, they get mostly powder snow.
Pin Rouge will get more snow than Fredericton, but less than Amqui.
Fredericton is normally susceptible to freeze thaw cycles after a storm and we typically get wetter snow, but this winter has been all powder all the time.

In the future, I hope to travel up there for a big storm that will us down here, I will most likely end up in Amqui because it's a good 3 hours closer and has a lot more lodging/food options, but I do want to make it back to Murdochville and the difference can sometimes be a foot of snow in Amqui but 2 feet in Murdochville.

I don't expect I'll be back to Pin Rouge any time soon, however it would be very fun to ski on a powder day.

I had originally hoped to do some cat skiing, but other expenses took precedent this winter and I was happy to just get up there.

 

[legalskier]

Awesome reports- thanks for taking the time to post.
And no, your pics don't suck at all; in fact, they give a very good impression of your encounters. I love learning about ski hills I've never heard of before- every year my bucket list gets longer. Nice to know there still are so many out there. I really should retire soon so I can get to them. Maybe hop in a camper & just drive around all over the NE & Canada getting a taste. 100 areas in 100 days, that's my dream. You've opened up some new horizons for us.
I do have one question though- where the heck is everyone? Those places look deserted!

 

[ironhippy]

I do have one question though- where the heck is everyone? Those places look deserted!

Great question! I forgot to mention that was part of my reasoning for going there, lack of crowds.

My local hill is only remotely busy on the weekends and it is not that busy, hence the current owners selling. The powder day on the first day was kind of a perfect storm. We don't get huge crowds on powder days, but we've had a half dozen storm days this year and there wasn't a lot of snow on the ground when we woke up, so no one took the day off to ski. It ended up being one of the better days of the year because the snow filled in your tracks and provided fresh snow all day long and just started to clear as the hill closed.

Amqui (Val D'Irene) is a regional park, so I don't know how dependent it is on crowds for funding. There was at most a 7 - 8 chair wait and as a single, I always got on with almost zero wait. Although there were obvious tracks, I did not see another person in the woods on Thursday or Friday, it was busier on Saturday, but really not all that busy.

Murdochville (Mont Miller) is very stripped down. A couple of times I had to wait in a line of 5 - 10 pairs, but it only resulted in a 3 or 4 minute wait.

Pin Rouge was surprisingly slow. They have a very long chair ride, so people can get pretty spread out, but I skied on the lift every time. It was Quebec's vacation week so I expected there to be a lot more people, but I wasn't complaining.

I'm sure all these places would be busier on powder days, but nothing like you're used to in New England, or even Montreal/Quebec regions.

edit: Mont Miller is closed during the week, but will open for parties of 25 or more!

 

[ironhippy]

this video was filmed at murdochville the day before I showed up (the day I had planned to go, but since I didn't make a hotel reservation, I missed out)

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10155397472600643

(hopefully this works)

gives a bit of an idea of the layout/trails

 

[Abubob]

Those are the best crappy cell phone photos I've ever seen. Thanks for this most awesome report.