Gatineau Park

Trails Skied: #50, Glide Wax: , Grip Wax: close to useless

My ski partner was on hairies; they worked well. My grip wax wore off on the very icy and hard classic tracks after a couple of km, so I suffered a bit today. Air temp was -6C but warmed up to around 0C by the time we got back to P16. We had trail 50 to ourselves, encountering just one family on the trip. Healy Shelter had a half dozen walkers/snowshoes, plus us, during lunchtime. Classic tracks were very dirty in places (see pic) and my best skiing was on the corduroy rather than in the set track; I had decent grip on the former, but only for half the outbound trip. Re-waxing on the return helped, along with the general downhill gradient. Still, the downhills were extremely icy and hard, requiring extreme caution. It looks like there's not too much snow remaining on trail 50. I suspect the Demsis folks are doing their best, but have a tough time getting the track into a decent condition.













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