We were up at 5:50 am, showered and ready to leave Motel Levis’ by 7am. Just one problem… The roads were not open yet.
So some sat in their rooms, some sat in their running vehicles… and waited. By 8am, we decided to quit listening to the news, and lets go see for ourselves. Our interpretation of the news was the highway was open to our exit for Montmagny, but closed after that. Let’s go find out.
Our interpretation was correct, and off we were, at the hotel by 9am. A quick unload of our sleds, park the trucks and lets get this ride started!
By 11am we were at the Ski Doo dealer less than a mile down the road, on the way out of town by trail. Joe Snowmobile and I each decided a new battery was in order, since our sleds were a little slow on their spark to life this morning, and a little preventive action right now can save a lot of grief later. Plus, everybody needed to fork our their 400$ Canadian for their annual trail permits.
By 11:15am, we were on the trail that cut thru the Ski Doo dealers parking lot and headed to Park Mont Citadelle. Or so we thought.
We got about 100 yards down the trail, and the winter storm that had moved thru the last 2 days have really had a negative impact for us on the trail. It was blown over, and in a low spot at the first turn, about 6 foot of snow had accumulated and 6 of our 11 riders were stuck! After an hour of digging themselves out, Craig our fearless leader and Hedgehog did a recon run a bit up the trail to see how conditions were further up. Not good. 4’-6’ drifts, and very lumpy. No way would 11 sleds make it 125 miles, starting at noon, breaking trail, and be in at any safe and reasonable time this evening.
We gathered everybody at the gas station accross the road from the Ski Doo dealer, to discuss our options. Connecticut Jim went back to the Ski Doo dealer to inquire if they knew the groomer schedule and Action Dan went to the Arctic Cat Dealer accross the road katty korner, to make the same inquiry there. The report was, it would be at least Tuesday, maybe Wednesday before the groomers got here. We looked at Craig, “ what’s plan B?”. The first topic presented was go back to the hotel, get rooms for tonight and ride out in the morning. This would throw off our first 2 nights of scheduled stops. The next suggestion, which nobody wants to do when your supposed to be “ski doo-ing”, was to contact Park Mont Citadelle, see if they can accomodate 3 of our trucks with trailers, and just stage from there, so we could maintain our schedule. A quick phone call, confirmation of truck parking, re-loaded sleds, and down the road we went for the 1.5 hour by road trip to Citadelle.
We got to Citadelle around 5pm, after we stopped for a sit down lunch on the road, unloaded our gear and checked into each of our respective cabins. Action Dan, Snowmobile Joe and Stick shared a cabin, got our wood burning fireplace stoked up, and set up the bar. Soon the rest of the group congretated in our cabin for happy hour, before our scheduled 7pm dinner. During our happy hour, a suprise visit was made to our cabin by our friends from New York that we met on the trail about 3-4 years ago. We didn’t think we would see Gaf, Ed and Dan on this trip, as their itenerary didn’t cross with ours this year, but the winter storm diverted their trail as well, so they wound up at Citadelle as well, knowing we would be there. We caught up, socialized, and the expanded group rode our sleds to the main lodge for dinner together.
Tomorrow, we are off to Moose Valley for 2 nights. The boys want to do some local trail riding at Moose Valley, and see if they can catch a view of the abundant moose population that inhabit the locale.
Bye for now…
Stick
