A long weekend means an opportunity for adventures! This weekend Shane and I went to Charlevoix to camp for the weekend and get in some hiking. We visited parts of this area briefly back on the May long weekend with Fred and Kathleen.
We choose a campground that would be central to everything we wanted to do, which our main goal was to cross three more SEPAQs off our list. We ended up getting to the campground really late, the office was closed and we couldn't find our campsite. We choose an empty one and then had to pack up in the morning. This meant a later start to our hike but it wasn't a long one. We knew it would be hard since we were summiting a mountain but in and out was only ten km.
Acropole des Draveurs has been on our list for a long time since it's rated one of the most beautiful hikes in the province. Mont Albert, one we did in Gaspésie had similar ratings and we were not disappointed by it. This trail is in Hautes-Gorges-de-la-Rivière-Malbaie National Park and it gets its name from the valleys carved out of the mountains. Apparently these gorges are due to a large meteorite crash way way back in history. This is the park's longest and hardest hike, and also the most popular. I made sure to pack lots of water and even my filter in case we ran out.
The trail started off as expected, heading steadily up along switch backs. I was surprised that the view didn't get spectacular until the summit though. The hike was average for views until we reached the first of three summits and then I just wanted to sit and stare.
Here are some photos of how stunning it was up there!
We had lunch on the third summit and ended up staying for quite some time enjoying the view. As we started down, we stopped a lot to take photos since there were significantly less people. We ended up being the last people on the summit, and had the park employee going along behind us closing the summits. I had never been on a summit when it closed before, I'm not sure if they do this on all trails or just this one. I did chat with the guy a bit and he says sometimes he can be up there quite late since he has to move at the pace of the slowest person doing the descent. We did see a lot of families, people wearing jeans, wearing converse, and even people not carrying water so it is good to know they look out for people on the trail.
Overall, the ascent was not as hard as I was expecting, it only took two hours to summit. I definitely recommend bringing lots of water, especially if it's a sunny day. I would also recommend making sure you give yourself lots of time to sit and just soak up the view. A lot of people recommend going early to avoid the crowd but if you go later you can have the summit to yourself as well!