It seems a lot of people had parties to go to the evening before. Whatever the reason, we were only a group of ten who turned out on a brisk (8 C) and mostly sunny morning at Mont St Hilaire. But it was worth the effort to come out — the autumn colours were in abundance and it was great hiking weather. Many other people thought so also, as the parking lot was filling up quickly when we arrived.
The proposed meeting time of 9:45 a.m. was overly optimistic. With a few construction detours 
on the island to deal with, it took us a little while to all arrive and get together. Ken gallantly volunteered to trek from the Pavillon d’accueil back down to the parking lot to check for stragglers. Somehow that 200 metre walk up the hill from the parking lot feels like one of the toughest climbs of the day! Finally we were assembled, we had our group photo taken, and we set off at 10:30 am.
Our hike leader on this day was Steve Bubnich. He briefed us on the 11 km route we would cover and began assuredly guiding us along our traditional route on the western edge of the mountain. Out first stop was the lookout at Burned Hill. With a stiff and cool westerly breeze, we did not linger long. We continued to the Pain de Sucre lookout. This is probably the best known lookout, with a large rocky summit that has imbedded ropes to help people climb to the top. It has the best view towards Montreal and it was worth enduring the wind for a couple of
minutes to take in the autumn-hued vista. The trail leading to and from the lookout was the most crowded part of the day.
Once we got back down to the main trail, Steve led us north towards the Dieppe summit. The trail became much less crowded — for most people visiting the park, walking to the Pain de Sucre is enough for one day. But not for us Beaver Tails, of course — we were just getting warmed up! So off to Dieppe we went. Two km later we reached Dieppe and clambered along its multiple viewpoints until we reached the main one. At this point the official trail ends and we should have backtracked and looped around to get to the last lookout at Rocky. But where’s the fun in that, so we continued past the “end of the trail” warning sign. There is a bit of a tricky ascent on a poorly marked trail, which we did lose for a bit. But after a short spell of bush whacking, we were back on the trail and soon after at the summit of Rocky. It was still breezy, so we soon descended and stopped for a short food break along a sheltered part of the trail.
All the summits had been conquered, so it was time to return to the starting point. We had covered 7 km to this point and we aimed to return on the 4 km blue route so that we would achieve our stated objective of 11 km. But we made one wrong turn and ended up on the 3 km green route. This turned out quite fine, because this gave us the chance to take the 0.8 km “passerelle”, which was entirely on an elevated boardwalk. This brought us back to the lake and then back to the Pavillon d’accueil. With the extra bit on the passerelle and the distance back to the car, we managed to hike our 11 km. We took 3 hr 25 min.
Our annual day of hiking on Mont St-Hilaire was a very pleasant one indeed! Thanks go out to Steve for being our patient guide.