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Gaspe trip.


GrizzlyGriff

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14 hours ago, signfan said:

Where were you crossing the river?  

I believe it was Campbellton, New Brunswick.  The bridge cannot be crossed, so the ice is normally marked with a tree line and there is a local trail leading north to the main trail on the Quebec side, however the storm had buried the trail and swept away the tree line.  The young man running the gas station across the street from the river in Campbellton was a sledder and described all of that and then said if we could get over the huge snowdrift and get on the river ice we should look for a group of lights and head towards them.  It was a parking lot of a store next to the main road north.  He knew the trail would be gone and that we had to just follow the edge of the road to get to the motel we were booked at.  It was scary even though he 100% guaranteed the ice to be solid on the river.  I knew the ocean connected to this wide body of water and being pitch black at 9 pm and wicked winds still blowing snow causing short white-outs it took some faith to venture across.  We first wanted to hire a tow service or just take the bridge, because there seemed to be no way to even get over the drift across the street.  I tried riding down the street looking for a way around the drift with no luck.  When I came back, Patrick, Mark, zrtkat & crew, and the rest were crawling over the drift and trying to dig it down where the trail was supposed to be.  Patrick managed to run his sled up and almost over.  The others dug and pulled and his sled was on the way down to the area next to the river.  He jumped on other sleds and over and over we finally got it broke open and the rest made it so we could get on the ice.  Once we crossed the river and found a way up onto a road, it was about a half hour of road running to the motel.  What a day it was from Caraquet to Campbellton and then up to Motel Interprovincial on Route 132 in Quebec.      

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4 hours ago, AC+YA said:

I believe it was Campbellton, New Brunswick.  The bridge cannot be crossed, so the ice is normally marked with a tree line and there is a local trail leading north to the main trail on the Quebec side, however the storm had buried the trail and swept away the tree line.  The young man running the gas station across the street from the river in Campbellton was a sledder and described all of that and then said if we could get over the huge snowdrift and get on the river ice we should look for a group of lights and head towards them.  It was a parking lot of a store next to the main road north.  He knew the trail would be gone and that we had to just follow the edge of the road to get to the motel we were booked at.  It was scary even though he 100% guaranteed the ice to be solid on the river.  I knew the ocean connected to this wide body of water and being pitch black at 9 pm and wicked winds still blowing snow causing short white-outs it took some faith to venture across.  We first wanted to hire a tow service or just take the bridge, because there seemed to be no way to even get over the drift across the street.  I tried riding down the street looking for a way around the drift with no luck.  When I came back, Patrick, Mark, zrtkat & crew, and the rest were crawling over the drift and trying to dig it down where the trail was supposed to be.  Patrick managed to run his sled up and almost over.  The others dug and pulled and his sled was on the way down to the area next to the river.  He jumped on other sleds and over and over we finally got it broke open and the rest made it so we could get on the ice.  Once we crossed the river and found a way up onto a road, it was about a half hour of road running to the motel.  What a day it was from Caraquet to Campbellton and then up to Motel Interprovincial on Route 132 in Quebec.      

Ok.  I was wondering if the river froze there.  Nothing for a trail shown on either the New Brunswick or Quebec trail guides.

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1 hour ago, signfan said:

Ok.  I was wondering if the river froze there.  Nothing for a trail shown on either the New Brunswick or Quebec trail guides.

There was a dashed line shown on a local paper map we got from the club guy who sold us all a single-day New Brunswick trail pass because the passes we had expired while we were stuck for an additional "storm" day.  He confirmed the crossing as he had used it that season on a Gaspe tour.  

 

That was 2019 so I cannot confirm there is still a tree line or local trail north of the river.  My guess is that locals still use it even if not, but weather will certainly be a factor.  We were told that the tow truck flatbed can always be called to cross, but plan on ah hour for each crossing of two sleds and about $100/sled.  A group may take a half day.  There is another crossing farther west, so call ahead if you plan to jump down to NB.  We came south from Matane to Edmonston on the way into NB.

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4 hours ago, signfan said:

Ok.  I was wondering if the river froze there.  Nothing for a trail shown on either the New Brunswick or Quebec trail guides.

If you look on the Quebec trail map there are a local trail that run down towards the river west of the bridge. Back in the late 90's there was a marked trail from that area across the river in a south west direction when it was properly frozen. It landed near Atholville (I'm not kidding LOL) which is almost like a suburb of Campbellton. You could go left on a trail along the river to the hotel at the bridge or if you went straight you would be on a multi use railbed that headed southwest into New Brunswick towards Kedgwick. Not sure if thats the AC+YA

We used that crossing once but the next time, the river wasn't fully frozen over so a local with a 4 bed trailer hauled us across the bridge to the hotel parking lot. Back then it was $20.00 a sled for the ride over. 

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We were at the Campbellton Hotel by the bridge, they had a tow truck operator with a tilting flatbed. He was bringing across four to five sleds at a time, I saw a lot of 504 bills changing hands. We didn't take the shuttle as we backtracked through moose valley and the took the trail north into the Matapedia Valley. That was probably one of the best trails I have ever been on. The only other tracks were moose tracks.The bumps on the trail were moose crap. That was in February 2019. We plan to be back there this February to finish this journey.

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1 hour ago, coldfinger said:

We were at the Campbellton Hotel by the bridge, they had a tow truck operator with a tilting flatbed. He was bringing across four to five sleds at a time, I saw a lot of 504 bills changing hands. We didn't take the shuttle as we backtracked through moose valley and the took the trail north into the Matapedia Valley. That was probably one of the best trails I have ever been on. The only other tracks were moose tracks.The bumps on the trail were moose crap. That was in February 2019. We plan to be back there this February to finish this journey.

504 bills ???   You had me go to Urban Dictionary    Almost lost sleep     thanks for the clarification  HA ha    And here I thought you were going to comment on our trip with the shuttle service 

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3 hours ago, PISTON LAKE CRUISER said:

I

We used that crossing once but the next time, the river wasn't fully frozen over so a local with a 4 bed trailer hauled us across the bridge to the hotel parking lot. Back then it was $20.00 a sled for the ride over. 

We did it in 07    we were 6 so 4 on the flat deck wrecker towing  a 2 bed trailer   will never forget 6 of us in the mini van taxi and   Coldfinger says      well thats not good  we are going this way and the sleds are going the other way      we did meet up with the wrecker  of course and all worked out     cant remember but I think it was 20 bucks    after New Brunswick we took a tour into Maine     was a wirl wind  

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18 hours ago, volunteer2 said:

We did it in 07    we were 6 so 4 on the flat deck wrecker towing  a 2 bed trailer   will never forget 6 of us in the mini van taxi and   Coldfinger says      well thats not good  we are going this way and the sleds are going the other way      we did meet up with the wrecker  of course and all worked out     cant remember but I think it was 20 bucks    after New Brunswick we took a tour into Maine     was a wirl wind  

We  did the same. Went down through NB then crossed the river over into Maine and onne day up through Maine and back into Quebec.

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On 10/19/2021 at 8:34 PM, coldfinger said:

We were at the Campbellton Hotel by the bridge, they had a tow truck operator with a tilting flatbed. He was bringing across four to five sleds at a time, I saw a lot of $50 bills changing hands. We didn't take the shuttle as we backtracked through moose valley and the took the trail north into the Matapedia Valley. That was probably one of the best trails I have ever been on. The only other tracks were moose tracks. The bumps on the trail were moose crap. That was in February 2019. We plan to be back there this February to finish this journey.

The night we finally reached the river there was in a big storm blowing and already about 9 pm.  The gas station attendant said the flatbed tow could only take 2 guys at a time in the cab of the truck.  I never asked him about a taxi so it would take a bunch of trips.  I don't believe I was even thinking clearly and was just focused on getting to the motel.  We had like 12 sleds and the time it would take to get us across was more of an issue than the $ at that point.  I just went out to figure another way as we were all very tired and just wanted to be done for that day.  We kept thinking of just taking the bridge, but the guy said we would be arrested.  We did not really understand where we were and had taken roads to get to the town as trails were not passable especially in the dark.  We were too tired to keep digging out stuck sleds.  There was probably a premium to be paid for this "emergency" night time storm service anyway.

Planning ahead would be a much better idea, but we were glad to even make it to the town as we were told not to even leave that morning.

 

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We may have been in that same blizzard as you. We were on the north shore when the weather took control of our day . Destination was Rimouski  got escorted into Mont  Joli by a  road  supervisor  as he was closing down the roads . At the edge of town we were meet by the police he told us to run the roads and booked us a motel room at the Quality Inn .  Awesome motel , good location for trail  access ,  meals etc. So the plan now is to finally get to Rimouski and take in a Jr A hockey game . Never meet a Quebecer l didn't like .

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We got stuck in a storm on the way home from Gaspe 2 years ago and had to sleep in the high school gym in Montmagny.   

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