View towards St. Lawrence River from Lookout on Monts-Valin
A winter wonderful weekend in Monts-Valin Quebec, a national park near Saguenay, a 6-hour drive from Cornwall to Saguenay. We left Thursday, stayed at the Auberge Cenre Ville in Saguenay, then the next day we drove a half hour to the park, registered, then headed off to the hut. That morning it was raining but soon, as we ascended the rain turned to snow and eventually stopped. We arrived at our first hut Ulysse. We started the fire in the woodstove and settled into our little cabin for the night. The hut could fit 8 people, 2 rooms with bunkbeds, 4 people in each room. The hut was so well insulated, it was like a sauna and I was swetting through the night form the heat, by early morning I was cooling down but never had to cover up and slept in my underwear. The next day we broke trail to our next hut Le Pionnier, about 4 km away. There was so much drift of snow from the wind pushing the snow. There was a sketchy section where the trail was buried and we traversed along a steep bank, sliding slightly on our snowshoes from the angle. We arrived at Le Pionnier in plenty of time to settle in, have a late lunch, scout around and then finally go to bed early, shortly after sunset at 7:10pm. Our next morning we were greeted with a blizzard, blowing snow. We thought we would have to break trail again but fortunately, we were starting early enough that the accumulation of snow hadn't settled yet and the trail was still broken out from the group the day before of 15 people heading back to the centre. We hiked back 8 km to the center and from there we drove to the same Auberge we stayed at on the way here. We had a great drive home in the sunshine and were back in Cornwall by mid afternoon.
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