Monday 26 September 2022

Parc National de La Jacques-Cartier

This park preserves some of the Laurentean mastiff and the eastern forest/boreal forest transition that occurs on this river. I wanted to go there in 2017, but the week I was in the area it snowed or rained all week.

To get there, google gave me three choices. As I would much prefer winding roads with forest on all sides I decided not to go via Quebec City. This was a mistake. Firstly, I was wandering along the main highway, trying to find the first side road, and didn’t. I couldn’t find the second one either. So I went back to where I’m staying and worked out how to get there. 

Unfortunately, the first road was a farm lane that was closed after 500 metres, despite the gps and google saying it went through. So I found the second alternative. This was great, for eighteen kilometres, but it then stopped being sealed, and soon had another gate across it. 



So there was nothing for it but to retrace my journey and go via Quebec City. I’d wasted hours! Have I yet said that it was raining - sometimes quite heavily. There’s a lot of trees and moss in the area, so it probably rains or snows most of the time. When I made it to the park, they advised me to walk the L’Eperon trail. I’d already been advised by google that it was one of the best, so I followed my advisors.

The trail is a loop that goes to the top of the L’Eperon mountain and back down again. I did the steep climb first, and took the gentle half of the trail back. On the way there are many lookouts.








One (near the top) overlooks the house you walk past as you go from the car park to the trail.







There was also plenty of moss.



It really was a fantastic trail, but the walk back goes on forever!

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