I had a shuttle to catch at 5pm from the Discovery centre so I was up early and on the trail by 6:45. As I was climbing up Mt Ellis from Lac Cascapedia, I heard some rustling in the forest. I was quite certain that it was a moose, but I couldn’t see it. After a minute of not hearing or seeing anything, I kept going and as the trail turned a corner, I spied the moose far off in the trees looking a me uncertainly. I got out my phone to take a pic and I did manage to get one, but not a great one as it was already turning tail.

After Mt Ellis, it was on to the Mt du Milieu, although the trail mostly goes down to it, since it’s slightly lower than Mt Ellis. The summit has a hollow metal tube and if you look through it one way, you see Mt Logan and if you look the other way, you see Mt Jacques Cartier, the highest peak in Eastern Quebec. It’s a fun little summit, but I did manage to ding my head on the metal tube when I was climbing down.

From there it was a more serious downhill to a track that passes by a refuge on a lake. As I was passing, a family of five with three teenagers was leaving. They had their rain gear on despite it being a nice day and I was a bit confused until I stopped for a second and was immediately swarmed by a hoard of hungry mosquitoes. The family told me that they were marooned inside the refuge all evening because of all the mosquitoes and if someone opened the door to go out and use the toilet, they’d get invaded. I didn’t tell them that a few kms away at Lac Cascapedia, there were literally none. It was my least buggy campsite on trail to date. I quickly dowsed myself in bug spray, but it wasn’t so bad once I got moving again. The trail meanders through some forest for about 4 kms to a tent camping site and then starts to climb again. I caught up with the guy from the Kalmia campsite, it turned out he had left Cascapedia even earlier than me and had also seen the moose. We hiked together for a while as the trail led across a river and then towards Mt Albert, which has a very expansive summit above the treeline. We emerged from the trees and kept climbing through the alpine plain keeping an eye out for Caribou that can sometimes be spotted here.

We didn’t see any caribou but we did see snow, I couldn’t believe that there were still patches left. As we climbed it got quite windy but it was a sunny day, which kept me warm enough. We stopped before the descent down a culvert and had lunch. After a decent break, we got moving again and it was a lot of rock hopping until we reached a snow field.

The trail clearly went under the snow, but there weren’t any visible footprints and it looked a bit steep and possibly slippery so we hesitated to step out onto it. Finally, I went for it and it actually turned out to be much easier to walk/slide down the snow than to clamber over the rocks. We were across in a jif and back onto solid ground. The trail continued down and eventually forks; the official trail continues to follow the culvert downwards and goes around Mt Albert, while the other other trail goes back up to another part of the summit and then back down the other side of the mountain. I had done the official trail two years ago, so I decided to climb back up and see the other summit. My companion realised that he must have dropped his water filter somewhere nearby (after lunch) and went back to look for it, but thought he would take the official trail. I felt a bit bad not helping look for his filter, but also didn’t want to miss the shuttle. I figured, it would be easy to find since he’d had it quite recently. In any case, I never saw him again so I have no idea how it turned out for him. The climb was incredibly steep, but it was the type of climbing that I like, where you can still place your feet fairly flatly and it was along a waterfall. I met quite a few day hikers coming down as I was going up and chatted quickly with a few of them.

Near the top, there’s a boardwalk to protect the fragile plants and a couple were sitting on it near a helicopter. I asked if everything was ok and it turned out that the man had sprained his ankle and that they were hoping to be able to go down in the helicopter, which was there for more trail maintenance. They had been told that it might be possible, but they hadn’t been given the ok. I gave him some Advil and Tylenol and wished them luck (turned out they did get a free helicopter ride). I continued on to the highest area where there was a hut and a ranger with binoculars. I asked him if he’d seen anything interesting, but he hadn’t. He did start telling me and a bunch of other day hikers having a break there, that some caribou had been spotted nearby yesterday and that they often hang out on the snow patches at this time of year since they prefer the cool it provides. The views were beautiful, the sun was warm but not hot, it wasn’t too windy, the ranger was answering everyone’s questions and telling us about the alpine environment and then I was asked about what I was doing…it ended up a much longer break than I had anticipated.

I did finally get going with the assurance of the ranger that I still had plenty of time to make the shuttle. The trail down was tough on the knees, lots of big steps downwards. At some point, it wasn’t just my knees, my feet and Achilles were hurting again. There was an area where a maintenance crew were rebuilding a bridge, but it was easily passable, and another where the trail had been wiped out by an avalanche, which was also still easily passible despite the destruction.

The trail did flatten out a bit at the end, but it was still a relief to finally reach the Discovery centre. I went in to pay for the shuttle and got myself another soda. I never drink pop, but I just needed something cold and sweet and it seemed to be fitting the bill out here. I had a half hour to wait until the shuttle was due to leave and just chilled for a bit and took advantage of the wifi. I noticed a couple who were waiting for the shuttle as well, whom I had crossed when I was going up to the second part of the summit. We started talking and they turned out to be sailing up the St-Laurence from Quebec City to Halifax. Their boat was docked in SAdM and they decided to take the shuttle into the park to do a hike. The woman seemed to be even more tired than I was. The shuttle took about 40 minutes and dropped us off along the main road in SAdM. My Airbnb was a few kms walk away and I ended up going to grocery store with the sailing couple since it didn’t look like there would be any restaurants near the Airbnb and I couldn’t fathom walking any further, I wasn’t even sure if I’d make it to the Airbnb. The grocery store was a bit disappointing, no fresh local berries despite it being July. I did find some cherries in the end and got a frozen pizza and a pre-packaged salad. I also bought myself some eggs, English muffins and cheese to make some egg McMuffin type breakfast sandwiches for tomorrow’s breakfast. I said goodbye to my sailing friends at the marina and kept on along the waterfront to the Airbnb. It was such a relief to finally get there and settle in, although I had chores to do like washing my clothes in the sink (no washing machine) and pulling out my tent to air out and dry. It was a very cozy space, just one room, but it had a kitchen area, a dining area and a living area with a sofa bed. I had my second shower in two days and finally had some dinner and put up my feet on the sofa while I watched some tv before bed.