Two rainy days. It was raining when we left Parc du Bic yesterday and it continued off and on all the way to Parc de la Gaspésie. The ride was pretty uneventful, stopping only for gas, coffee and lunch.
Gaspésie is much different than Bic. It is about 25 km in from the coast and is mountains and forest. It is a park for hiking, containing seven of the ten highest mountains in Quebec. The second highest in the province, Mont Jacques-Cartier, is the high point in the park at 1270 meters (4167 ft), not high by New England standards (much less western Canada and the US), but pretty much the last gasp of the Appalachians. We didn't climb it.
We found a campsite at the Camping du Mont-Albert campground. It is a typical forest campsite hemmed in by trees and with no services, a challenge for Speedy's solar panels in the rain. The campground is in the center of the park, 45 km by dirt road from the Mont Jacques-Cartier trailhead. It is right near the Visitor Center and the Gîte du Mont-Albert, a classic mountain inn. It is also at the base of Mont-Albert. Our target for today.
It wasn't to be. It rained overnight and was pretty misty in the morning. The summit of Mont-Albert was shrouded in clouds. The trail up the mountain goes to a viewpoint near the summit (actually a plateau), then continues around the mountain to join the IAT (the International Appalachian Trail), an extension of the Appalachian Trail that runs from Maine to Labrador (mostly through Quebec). The IAT runs along the south side of the mountain and down to just outside the campground.
Since the summit was fogged in we decided to go up the IAT to the Chute du Diable (a waterfall) and then to a hut called La Serpentine, a 12.6km ( hike with 360 meters of climbing. We didn't quite make it.
We started out in a bit of mist which quickly turned to rain before we even reached the main road. We didn't know how long it would last, so we returned to Speedy. Cups of tea and coffee ensued while we dried off.
The rain stopped. The sky lightened. We decided to give it another try. We got about a mile up the trail and stopped to try to find some birds we could hear nearby. With no luck, we started onward and it started raining again, just lightly at first, but as we went on it got consistently heavier. By the time we reached the Chute Diable (a worthy view), it was coming down steadily. We started up towards the hut, another 1.7 miles, but quickly decided that when we got there, we would be having lunch in a damp, chilly hut with probably no view, facing a 4 mile hike down a steep trail in the rain.
We turned back, opting for the 2 miles in the rain and lunch in Speedy with the heater on.
By mid-afternoon, the rain had stopped, but we were not up to chancing it again and drove over to the visitor center, where they have Internet access, and caught up on mail.
The weather doesn't look to improve much over the next few days and deep forest is not Ellen's preferred habitat, so tomorrow we will be moving on to the end of the Gaspé Peninsula and Forillon National Park.
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