Drowned on the Trans Canada Highway: Mont-Laurier to Grand Remous

Leaving Mont-Laurier on the Trans Canada Trail was a brutal re-introduction to all the least enjoyable aspects of hiking across Canada.  For the past two weeks we've been enjoying a gorgeous trail, complete with beautiful scenery, distance and interpretive signage, rest stops, places to camp, stay, eat, and re-supply.  You really couldn't ask for a better trail system, but sadly Mont-Laurier marked the end of the P'tit Train du Nord.  The next 33-36 km of the Trans Canada Trail from Mont-Laurier to Grand-Remous were on the side of the busy Trans Canada Highway.  

 

Our trek out of Mont-Laurier also came with a heavy rainfall warning for the day. In the end, over 8 hours 50 mm of rain fell, and I can only say walking outside felt a bit like being under water.  The stream of logging trucks, transports, dump trucks, and oversized construction vehicles on the stretch of highway heading west out of Mont-Laurier was unceasing, and in the heavy rain each vehicle sent up a wall of water as it shot past. There was nowhere to take shelter except a few abandoned gas stations along the route, and there was certainly nowhere to stop or take a break.  I remember little of the day beyond the roar of huge trucks and the massive waves of water they pushed in front of themselves as they drove.  Photography was almost impossible given the amount of rain falling, the need to protect equipment, and there being no desire to stop.

I wish I could tell you what the region looked like, felt like, and sounded like.  However for us it was 8 hours of listening for trucks, marching through a white wall of ceaseless rainfall on the side of the highway, and trying to stay warm.  In the end we kept our rain gear tightly done up (which helped for about 10 minutes), our heads down and trekked forward simply trying to get from point A to point B.

Walking out on Mont-Laurier on the TCT

In the entire time trekking we took a single 5 minute break after a huge truck nearly knocked me off my feet with a massive wave of water as it went by.  

 

video clips from throughout the day

 

Today on the Trans Canada Highway portion of the Sentier Transcanadien was perhaps the hardest hike I have ever done in my life.  Not for the physical difficulty of walking alongside a road but for the mental effort of pushing on despite the rain and regardless of the volume of nearby traffic.

Interestingly, even the TCT's own webpage suggests an alternate route should be taken, but choices are extremely limited.  In addition it does make one question why the Trans Canada Trail has been put along a route so dangerous even they suggest finding alternatives?  Indeed this same stretch of highway hiking is considered so dangerous that it is the focus of a feature by Maclean's Magazine - How the Dream of the Trans Canada Trail sores and falls short.

Suffice it to say that at the end of a miserable day during which we got completely drenched to the skin, we realized that to wild camp in these conditions would be the same as putting our tent in a lake, and so we found ourselves taking a taxi back (never forward) to the Super 8 in Mont-Laurier were we desperately spent the night trying to dry everything we owned before taxi-ing back to our point of departure in Grand Remous to trek on to Maniwaki tomorrow. 

We may not have been pretty or dignified by day’s end in the back of a taxi dripping everywhere, but we got it done!  Though almost drown out on the Trans Canada Highway our westward progress has continued!

See you on the trail!

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