Station de Ski Valinouët: Way Back

I always thought time travel was fiction. Never did I walk outside onto Jackson Ave to find a conspicuous red phone booth. My band never had the opportunity to open for Wild Stallions at CBGB’s. My Audi, despite being a capable partner in all seasons is not equipped with a flux-capacitor.

Station de Ski Valinouët

Certainly my GPS couldn’t tell me that if I drove 6 hours north and east of Montreal, I’d come to a land before fat skis, where snowboards reigned Supreme like it was still the 90s. The kind of ski area where people still clip sticky wickets to hawk lift tickets for last runs on their way out of the parking lot.

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Quebec: Long Lakes and Climbing Takes

I looked up at the stars with my head cocked all the way back, as if my body was about to be sucked up into the heavens. This view alone was worth the two year wait since I first heard about the cliffs along Lac Long, a little north and west of Quebec City. It was Friday night, and it felt great to settle in after hiking by our campsite inadvertently, well past dark.

The park is a climbing-insiders favorite here, providing a mix of established and open traditional lines in a setting that is neither remote adventuring or old news, a locals spot that’s also worth a pilgrimage. Perhaps the reason it is so perfectly overlooked, like Val David, is that it resides in yet another Quebec regional park.

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A Mont Baldy Climbing Bébé

Brendan Leonard had an excellent article on not bailing this week; he wrote of the importance of being there for your adventure partners. I also believe that opening up your itinerary to new places and faces is crucial and wish he could have included it in his golden rule.

mt baldy quebec climb
Arrache Dents (5.11a)

This weekend’s unforgettable adventure was powered by all of the above. I ended up in a small hatchback with new climbing partners not heading to Val David for a change — and I was pretty happy about it.

On tap for the day was Mount Baldy, possibly the closest climbing area to Montreal. It’s not for newbies. What it lacks in vertical, it makes up for in horizontal — the 25 meter cliff just stretches forever through some dense woods just far off enough from the highway to give it a remote feel.

mt baldy
Mont Baldy photo courtesy Ghislain Allard

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