Gatineau Park

Trails Skied: #51, #53, Glide Wax: green, Grip Wax: green

A late day report from yesterday but conditions seem to be pretty static right now. I skied out of P17 late in the afternoon. I waited as long as I could for the mercury to creep up and finally headed out about 3pm. Interestingly the "marginal conditions" sign was up at the trail head and I would soon discover why. The trail was nicely groomed,but immediately after crossing the field its apparent that the groomer is still pulling up a bit of gravel into the trail. This is predominantly a problem for the skating lane although there were a few times I had to jump out of the classic tracks to avoid a bit of a gravelly section.

Interestingly, after the junction with 51, the trail(53) is groomed only for classic (narrower) and there was no problem with gravel at all - just nice, perfectly formed tracks. There is a couple of spots in the northern portion where 53 crosses a couple of small bogs which are still a little problematic (probably more trouble for the groomer than skiers) but these are short sections that can be skied across with no troubles. As I looped back onto 51 the trouble with gravel pulled up into the track returned. In spite of this it was still a beautiful ski with just a bit of caution to avoid some of the gravelly stretches.













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