Snowshoeing in Gatineau Park

My Quest’s main focus is visiting Canada’s 47 National Parks but I also plan on sharing with you my visits to any other parks, provincial, municipal or otherwise. And last week-end, I had the pleasure of visiting a park located right in my back yard: Gatineau Park! Although not a National Park, Gatineau is part of the federal family as it is managed by the National Capital Commission, a federal Crown corporation “dedicated to ensuring that Canada’s Capital is a dynamic and inspiring source of pride for all Canadians”. For Ottawa residents, Gatineau Park is hard to miss or as they say in French: ‘’un incontournable’’. I’ve often hiked its trails and even held my wedding reception in the Park’s Mackenzie Estate in July 2000!

With over 200 km of cross-country skiing trails and over 60 km for snowshoeing (my favourite winter sport) Gatineau Park has one of North America's largest winter trail system. Last Saturday morning, Michel and I snowshoed close to 10 km of trails in the Park’s southern sector. There were lots of cross-country skiers at the starting point, but we fortunately lost them as soon as we hit the snowshoeing trails. However, we did share our trails with several “fat tires” bikes. Maybe it’s just me, but that sport just looks like way too much work. I think I’ll stick to snowshoeing for the winter and cycling for the summer.

It was a perfect start to our week-end and a good warm-up for our upcoming snowshoeing expedition to Parc National de la Mauricie in a few weeks.