Papineau-Labelle ’09

I’ve been doing canoe trips in Papineau-Labelle Provincial Park in Quebec for oh about 25 years or so.  It is my home away from home.  So after this insane winter of work opening the Shangri-La Hotel here in Vancouver, I badly needed a break away from everything.  I hopped on a plane to Montreal, Sean and Brent picked me up at the airport, and after an hours sleep we headed North.

We gotta get our Venti Mocha Latte Half-Caf Soy Chai Vanilla Americano Mild 140-degree coffees.  Come on, this is a real man’s canoe trip.

Ahh Montreal traffic!  How I missed you.

The weather wasn’t looking too promising, very overcast and crappy in Montreal in the early AM.  The forecast for La Minerve (nearest town to the lake we’d be on) promised something better.

The entire city is falling apart, its incredible to see.  I think if you live there or visit often enough you don’t really notice how bad it is, Sean and Brent just kind of shrugged it off.  But it was incredible to me, like what I expected the town of Chernobyl to look like after being abandoned for 20 years.  Everything was under construction!  What happened?

Ahh the ski hills.  I don’t see the point.

And here we are, a familiar site.  Lac St-Denis.

The only portaging we’d do on this trip, from the truck to the lake, about 5 feet.  Way to go Sean!  Your first portage!

After all that hard work, we needed a beer break.

A quick 4 KM paddle down the lake and we were there, first things first:  Set up camp.

2nd task:  Hang the food bag.  Although we’ve never seen a bear up here, the little pesky rodents have made a mess of our food before.  By hanging the food from a rope we could keep all but the most determined buggers away from our GORP.

Sean…. get serious for a minute will ya?

The beach.  The water is really high, so there isn’t much of a beach.

Our kitchen.

Here are the GPS trails, nothing too exciting, but still fun to see.  I was treated to a great view of these lakes from the plane on the way home.  I’d always wanted to see them from the air, and what I saw looked just like what you see in Google Earth.  The park looks much smaller from up there.