Charlevoix Traverse - Day 2

February 22, 2015 - 16 km

We woke to a cold but beautiful day in the mountains. Debbie's thermometer reads a minimum temperature of -20, and the theme of the trip had us waking up to the mercury burried deep in the bulb. Now that we could see the surrounding terrain, we were awed by the size of the mountains and cliffs areound us. We skied out on a beautiful trail rolling through the woods in fantastic snow conditions. After a few falls, Andy and Ivan put skins on their skis, but the rest of us remained on wax. We had a crazy long descent of fairly steep trail which got the legs burning which was followed by a tricky bridge crossing as it was missing a somewhat critical board in the middle. This required some interesting ski bridging technique, as well as some liberal amount of German swearing to get across, but we all made it safely to the other side. Near the end of the day we had a long steep climb where we all applied skins to get up this pitch. At the top there was a steep scramble were we had to walk, but then we had a nice descent which we did first with the skins, but then Marc and I smartly ditched them prior to the final long gentle descent. A brief contemplation was made about climbing Mont des Morious, but without snowshoes, this was kind of impractical. The descent at the end was fantastic, and the last kilometer to the hut zoomed by. We arrived early afternoon and relaxed for the rest of the day.

Awoke in Chalet de l'Ecurueil to this lovely mountain behind us.

Real ski trails today.

Crossing the bridge of doom.

Hydro Quebec provided many open areas.

Chalet de la Marmotte.

The crew relaxing the afternoon away.

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