Gatineau Park

Trails Skied: Fortune Pkwy, #1, #3, #9, #18, #20, #21, Glide Wax: Dibloc blue LF, Grip Wax: A base of green klister mixed with tar and Start "super" green - klister wasn't needed

It was a perfect day for my bit-of-everything classic loop - parkway, Ridge, Burma, and backcountry. This loop is:
P10 => FP => #1 => #18 => #21 => #20 => #9 => #3 => FP => P10.
An ideal day with January snow and March sunshine. The tracks were on the slow side with the cold snow. All the trackset trails I took had just been done; the tracksetting was flawless on the Fortune Parkway and on #1, Burma was good in places but also had rough sections (probably the result of Saturday’s thaw). All the backcountry trails had good tracks with a layer of about 1 cm of new snow in the tracks. Off-track there is about 25 cm of powder covered with a light crust that breaks away easily if you go off track. Out of the track the skis sink in about 2-4 cm but the poles go to bottom - it’s not that hard to make your own trails.

A very enjoyable day - the only difficult thing was tearing myself away from the pond on #20 - a beautiful place.

If you want a good classic or backcountry day tomorrow should be ideal - with the forecast of rain for later in the week it might be the last good classic day for a while.













Gatineau park map


Gatineau Park is ski paradise! The network of ski trails offer machine groomed skate skiing and classic skiing as well as little groomed backcountry trails. Multiple access points allow skiers to access a variety of terrain and scenery. The NCC offers season or daily pay rates.

Gatineau park map

For suggestions on where to ski, excellent trail descriptions, photos and maps checkout Michael McGoldrick`s website about recreational xc-skiing in Canada`s National Capital Region (with an emphasis on the Gatineau Park).

Gatineau park map