Another tour along the Petit Train du Nord

Bit of a mixed bag weatherwise this past weekend. Made for difficult plan making but I chose to do a bit of riding in town and in the park to dodge any serious weather. With Monday off I opted to head north to Mount Laurier, Qc to ride a little bit more of the Petit Train du Nord rail trail. This is a bit of a new area for me so even the drive up was interesting (made doubly interesting thanks to an MTQ detour partway along that went nowhere and apparently served no purpose).

Arriving in Mount Laurier the main street was busy with traffic but I found the “station” and headed out along the trail which was pretty peaceful. Nicely paved it made for smooth riding. Inside of a few minutes the town was behind me and the trail continued into the Laurentide forests passing some big lakes and bogs. The trail itself was originally graded for trains so it’s never steep. In fact climbs are almost imperceptible. I had my GPS on so I could spot that – for roughly the same effort - my speed would drop slightly thus knowing I must be going uphill. Other than that it was pretty smooth sailing. I was surprised how little civilization there was along this part of the trail. For the most part it cuts through the bush from little village to little village. This is quite unlike parts of the trail further south with continuous strings of golf courses and cottage properties. I had also expected the trail to parallel roads but – if they were there- you couldn’t see or hear any traffic at all.

For a Monday the trails had a few other riders/skaters out but all in all pretty light. It was only as I returned to Mount Laurier in the evening that locals appeared for their evenings excercise. Spotted an interesting sign that suggests roller skiing is only allowed (on a trial basis) on a section of trail (24km) from Val Barrette to Lac Saguay and then only between 6 and 10am on weekdays. I guess there must be a lot of traffic on the weekends and they want to minimize the potential injuries that flailing poles might cause. Still if this Monday was any indication the odd person every 20 – 30minutes that I met could be easily passed by a roller skier with no ill effect. Too bad as 100km of paved trail from Mount Laurier to Labelle would make for some nice roller skiing.

Stopped for a coke at a trail side depaneur in Val Barrette before the last ride home. The extra sugar was welcome as I approached Mount Laurier. I could see approaching thunder heads but a last hard push got me to the car and safely packed up before the rain started to fall. Grey clouds had seemed to be everywhere all day threatening rain but I managed to dodge them all(or perhaps the trail I was on managed to dodge them…). A nice day out for sure.