Across the River & into the Hills
This past Monday was the first really splendid day in this Year of the Late Spring, sunny and warm with a fresh breeze from the NW. It was also Victoria Day, our quirky archaic nod to a 19th-century imperial queen whose name pops up in many Canadian towns and cities. Having been chained to my desk for most of the past couple of weeks, I decided to saddle up Osi and take my first ride of the year across the Ottawa to West Québec and up to Champlain Lookout in the Gatineau Hills. This is my standard ride away from the city, a nice 60-70 km round trip (depending on the loops) up to the Lookout at 300-some metres, with a grand view from the escarpment northwest back across the river. The hills are forested, a mix of deciduous trees—maple, birch and beech, in the main—and conifers, pines and spruce. There’s water everywhere, spring streams and lakes. We’re so privileged to have this year-round mini-paradise for cycling, hiking, skiing, snowshoeing, camping and paddling; with some good Québecois cafés within easy reach as well.
The combination of the brilliant weather and the public holiday meant that I had to contend with a bit more motor traffic than usual, though I’d guess that there were at least as many cyclists on the roads as drivers.
The first stop is a lookout over Pink Lake, named after a settler in the early 19th century. The lake is deep and cold—a month ago, there’d have been ice here:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/811h6jzhcp2xymt/1%20-%20Osi%20at%20Pink%20Lake.jpghttps://www.dropbox.com/s/i9omt9azalknii0/2%20-%20Spring%20comes%20to%20the%20Gatineau%2C%20late.jpgThe most beautiful of the woodland flowers is the trillium, Ontario’s symbolic flower (and the model name of my canoe) but common on the Canadian Shield in Quebec as well. Here’s a cluster:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ew38nkypmh59g72/3%20-%20No%20daffs%2C%20please%20--%20a%20cluster%20of%20trilliums.JPGEach plant blooms only once every seven years, so it’s rare to see a dense carpet of them. White is the default, but one occasionally sees a deep maroon-claret bloom. Lovely sight on a spring hillside:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/oqa4fkgs2fmucz8/4%20-%20Tilliums%20beside%20the%20road.JPG Champlain Lookout is about an hour and a half from my house, more if you pause for the trillium fotos. There’s a couple of good informative plaques, one of which recreates the view westwards out over the river as it might have been some 11,000 years ago, after the ice had retreated. Thus:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/35333w6csi0a5b1/5%20-%20Looking%20N%20from%20Champlain%20Lookout%2C%2011%2C000%20years%20ago.JPGToday, the same landforms are visible:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/dg3lg8ujxpgdhc4/6%20-%20Looking%20N%20from%20champlain%20Lookout%20today.JPG Hard to imagine that the spot where I was standing was, back in the day, under more than a mile of ice, in the form of the Laurentian/Wisconsin Glacier:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/n8p6fn0uov49ft8/7%20-%20A%20mile%20of%20ice%2C%20imagined.JPGThe bike enjoyed its rest in the sunshine, oblivious to the weight of history all around:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/4vez3xcyflleblv/8-%20Unconscious%20of%20the%20history%2C%20enjoying%20the%20sunshine.JPG (The passers-by, I was pleased to see, were also oblivious to Osi, maybe stunned by the warmth & the return of the sun, but completely uninterested in my so-obviously-a-touring-bike, despite its trick hubs.)
The ride back to town is always enjoyable, especially the back way past the ski club on the north slope, a sustained downhill which is also used for a serious uphill time-trial route by The Plastic Bike Brigade. My freewheel made a terrific clackety-ratcheting high-pitched buzz in 13th and 14th, and the bears stopped their snuffling and foraging among rotten tree stumps and ran for cover. Well, maybe they didn’t – I didn’t actually
see any bears, but had there been bears, it’s entirely likely that they would have fled: bears are smart creatures, they know which side of their toast has the honey, and I think they’d be plenty quick to bail out from an otherwise inviting hillside at the sound of a large, fast and angry swarm of African killer bees coming down the hill. Come to think of it, that’s probably why I didn’t see any…
The big river is very high this year, with spring rains and late snowmelt upstream, so the bikepath on the Québec side is now very close to the stream:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/4tbevcdo32nrn2i/9%20-%20Bike%20path%20beside%20the%20river%2C%20very%20full%20from%20rain%20%26%20snowmelt%20upstream.JPG Lovely ride, and the bike was once again very comfortable. Judging by the gears I needed (unloaded) for the steeper bits of the Gatineau, Osi & I will manage OK with a full load of camping gear on the tougher hills in the region.
