The Parc des Campeurs ski centre at Ste Agathe evokes a lot of strong reactions among our members. Many see it as a place where most of the trails are just a bit too challenging and out of the their comfort zone. But many others extol its virtues and consider skiing there one of the highlights of the ski season. But even those people who love it say that, with its narrow trails going up and down through the woods, you would not want to go there when the conditions are not ideal.
Fortunately, conditions *were* ideal at Ste Agathe last Sun. All 48 km of their trails were open, something we had not seen in a few years. Sure, it was a bit cold to start, and we delayed our arrival by an hour to give the temperature a chance to rise a few more degrees. But shortly after the 13 of us got going at about 10:30 am, under sunny skies, no wind, and with a temperature of -18 C, we warmed up just fine and the cold was not an issue.
We broke up into two main groups: the faster group had seven skiers and the not-quite-as-fast group had four skiers. Two other skiers opted to pursue solo trajectories at their own pace. The group of seven started on the green Stonehaven trail, then turned left on the black Oblats trail to get over to the start of the blue Grignon trail. (Consult the trail map here if you want to follow along: http://www.campingsteagathe.com/en/outdoor-center/map). We then continued along the blue Belvoir trail. We decided to skip the 2-km out and back up to the lookout on top of Mont-Ste-Agathe, not wanting to have a prolonged descent in the colder air. We then reached the junction of the black Cohen trail. This one is often closed when we visit, but not this time, so off we went. It offered some nice climbs and sharp descents. But the snow was good and the descents were all controllable.
At Ste Agathe, one thing they do well is putting signs at the start of the descents to tell you if it will be “raide” (steep), “moyenne” or “douce”. It is often not obvious from the start of the descent how it will be around the next bend. But with all the great snow on this day, nobody had any problems with the hills.
After the Cohen rejoined the Belvoir, we followed it to the next junction and turned onto the blue Davis trail and then took the cut-off for the blue Deux-Lacs trail. The other group of four had meanwhile been following a similar route, but they stuck to the blue trails when presented with the option to take a black trail. As a result, we encountered them several times during the day. The “photo of the week” on the web site’s home page captures one of those encounters.
The group of seven completed the trifecta of black trails offered at Ste Agathe by turning off the Deux-Lacs trail to take the black Sommet trail. More fun on the ups and downs. We then took the last part of the Grignon trail back to the campground area and then back to the chalet. We got back at 1 pm after doing 15.6 km (or 17 km, depending on whose GPS you consulted). The other six skiers all returned a few minutes later.
It had been a great outing and I suppose it would not have been an unreasonable option to go back out for a bit more. But after doing the ski clinic the day before, everyone decided they were satisfied with their effort. For four long-time members, it happened to be the first time they had made it to one of our Ste Agathe outings. Not surprisingly, they were impressed by the beauty of the trails and vowed to return!