Charlevoix Traverse - Day 4

February 24, 2015 - 21 km

The wind howled all night and the temperature plunged to below -30. Trips to the outhouse became full-on adventures, as there was risk of freezing to death while covering the ten meters of barren wasteland to the poo stall. Fortunately by the time our 06:00 rolled around the wind had died and it was actually a nice day if you discounted the frigid temperatures. Five of us decided that the weather was a go for the full loop over the mountain, while Ivan and Andy took a shortcut down the snow-mobile trail. Marc, having done the loop with Andy yesterday, served as our guide and after a fairly short ski from the hut, indicated that we should unroll the skins for the ascent. We climbed, and climbed, and climbed some more, enjoying some fantastic views of the surrounding mountains in the sunshine. The climb was beneficial to keep us warm in the cold air. As we climbed higher, the snow became more and more wind-slabbed, but this was easily handled with the carpets on the skis. Finally we reached the top and were rewarded to a beautiful view of the surrounding mountains. We took off the skins and enjoyed some exciting downhill pitches in challenging snow conditions. After a while of skiing up high we reached a road (snowmobile trail) and followed it for a bit until we got back onto the ski trail, which was unfortunately tracked out by a bunch of snow machines so was a bit of a mess. A long descent on this with some survival skiing manouvers and a fantastic view down a huge gorge, we finally got down to the main trail where we found a marker stick left by Andy and Ivan. A huge descent followed on the skidoo trail, but this was wide enough to negotiate easily and we dropped elevation in a real hurry. Finally we got down to a creek, where a narrow bridge preventing snowmobiles got us back onto an exclusive ski trail. We had lunch here, huddled in our down jackets to keep warm before continuing further, finally coming to another long and very steep descent which was fortunately switchbacked all the way down the mountain into a river gorge. We regrouped and then skied the last six kilometers to the hut in very flat but rugged terrain through some open woods. This went fairly slowly as we were all starting to get tired, but finally we arrived at the hut, meeting Andy and Ivan who had showed up an hour earlier. We had a fantastic supper as our food drop had arrived here along with a bunch of wine. People started dropping off to bed around 20:00 as it was a long hard day.

The crazy winds last night kind of buried our trail.