Cross-country skiing

Kilometres of happiness

La Mauricie National Park offers a vast network of nearly 70 km of marked classic and freestyle cross-country ski trails in the heart of a protected forest. It has everything to please sports enthusiasts and contemplative types alike, with trails of varying levels of difficulty, meticulously maintained by specialists. Welcoming facilities are available along the trails, with shelters equipped with wood-burning stoves, or at the Rivière à la Pêche Service Centre, with its waxing room and cross-country ski equipment rental centre. Cross-country skiers can also extend their stay with a variety of accommodation options near the trails. The park does everything in its power to provide you with unforgettable experiences!

Priority trail maintenance

The quality of the cross-country ski trails at La Mauricie National Park is the priority of a team of specialists who has been maintaining them for over 50 years. These experts are constantly improving their equipment and practices. For that matter, they work with modern snow-grooming machines equipped with GPS, used to update the Trail conditions web page. Night and day, the experts maintain the cross-country ski trail network progressively, according to priorities that take into account trail features, such as their proximity and difficulty of maintenance.

Check the trail conditions

The challenges of trail maintenance

Thanks to their expertise, the park's specialists adapt to all conditions to offer a network of high-quality cross-country ski trails. Several factors influence their trail maintenance work, such as forest cover (which affects snow levels), debris on the ground, uneven terrain, trail width, unforeseen events such as mechanical breakdowns, the time of season and weather conditions.

There are three important periods in the season:

• At the start of the season, trail maintenance is more time-consuming and difficult, and requires a lot of snow. Since 20 cm of snow on the ground can be reduced to 4 cm once groomed, it can take several storms to create a good base for the rest of the season.
• In winter, less snow is needed to track set the trails.
• At the end of the season, the team stops grooming and track setting when the weather warms up, rain showers are more frequent and the snow cover on the ground is insufficient.

Local weather conditions, such as precipitation, mild spells and winds, affect the frequency and speed of trail maintenance. For example:

• The team has to clear fallen trees after high winds or stop maintenance on a section of trail where snow has been blown away by gusts of wind.
• The team will not take the snow-grooming machines out if a snowstorm has been forecast for the next few hours. The specialists maintain the trails after a shower of snow or rain, when the temperature is ideally between -5 ^oC and -15 ^oC. They start by grooming the trails, then often track set them the next day, once the snow has hardened.

As weather and trail conditions can change rapidly over the course of a day, it is important to check the Trail conditions web page regularly.

Maintaining the trails is as much fun as cross-country skiing. The scenery is breathtaking, and the animals we meet are just one of the joys of the great outdoors! Just keep an appropriate distance from the animals, do not feed them, and notify park staff of your sightings. That way, you can help conserve this magnificent natural area.