Chic-Chocs chic
A backcountry retreat deep in the mountains of the Gaspé Peninsula delivers the ultimate wilderness experience. And fine cuisine.
Story and photos by Jerry Kobalenko
A 50-kilometre-an-hour wind howls on the summit of
Mont Matawees, in Quebec’s Monts Chic-Chocs, but the snow
is too hard to blow around. Earlier winds have already packed it
like Styrofoam. Even harder snow coats the krummholz, making
these squat alpine bushes as rigid as fire hydrants. I caution
my wife Alexandra, whose skis seem magnetically drawn to
trees, to avoid these stunted woods at all costs.
|
| Click map to enlarge |
Here, we believe in the three ‘S’s’: sport, sauna and sofa,” said
Gilbert Rioux, the mastermind behind the Chic-Chocs Mountain
Lodge, when we had arrived. This part is definitely sport. The
wind freezes the long, sweat-dampened hair of the women in our
group into nests of darning needles that poke out from under
their colourful toques. Clouds scud across the pastel midwinter
sky, shedding angular flakes that sting our faces. No one
is keen to spend too long on the summit, so we cautiously point
our skis downhill and are soon back in the forgiving snow of the
trees below timberline. Young birch saplings bend like slalom
gates as we cut past them.
At 17 kilometres, the Mont Matawees loop is the region’s
longest day tour, attempted by only a handful of skiers each year.
But our group is fit, the return leg goes quickly and we reach
the lodge just before dark. A table with hot
mulled wine has been set up outside the
boot room. Clearly, it is now time for the
other two “S’s.”
We had arrived at the Chic-Chocs Mountain Lodge three
days earlier, after a 90-minute ride by snowcat from Cap-Chat,
on Quebec’s Gaspé Peninsula. With its spacious seating and
partly glassed roof, the red snowcat has the luxurious feel of a
train observation car, and we scan for moose and dreamily
watch night descend on the Chic-Chocs. As we pull up to the
lodge’s front door, Dominique Gagnon, the manager and sommelier,
clangs a brass bell in welcome. The guides give us each
a small plastic box containing an avalanche beacon, a walkietalkie
and a room key on a carabiner. Alexandra and I walk along
the tamarack floor to settle into one of the lodge’s 18 rooms.
Quebec has plenty of fly-in hunting and fishing camps, but
this is the province’s first and only backcountry lodge devoted
to skiing, snowshoeing and hiking. It is a classy oasis in a
boreal wilderness where tents were the only previous backcountry
ski accommodation. The lodge is owned by the
government agency Sépaq (Société des établissements de plein
air du Québec), but it is the brainchild of Rioux, a mountaineer,
skier and lifelong Gaspesian, who convinced his bosses in
Québec to fund the project. The way he wryly describes it, he
seems to have been surprised by his own powers of persuasion.
“They gave me an envelope with $10 million,” he says, “and
I had to figure out what to do with it.”
|
