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The Voyage of the Trapper

Susan McKenzie / 09.09.2006

The race will begin tomorrow morning before sunrise. At 5am, teams will depart the Ashuapmushuan Nature Reserve for a short bike leg before transferring to canoes (the real ones, not kayaks) for the first of six paddling sections, this one an 80-kilometre journey down the Ashuapmushuan River and its “peat-blackened water.�

Then it will be back to the bikes briefly before the second paddle, 35-kilometres in sea kayaks along Lac St Jean. The first trekking section is a 48-kilometre hike that consists of what the race handbook calls “a saw-tooth series of successive ups and downs that will no doubt be exhausting.� The total elevation gain on this section alone is 3,000 metres.

The first biking section is being compared to a stage of The Tour de France, a 130-kilometre trip through the Parc des Hautes Gorges. The remainder of the race will be succession of biking, paddling and hiking sections.

980 kilometres in length, the race in terms of time is equal parts paddling, hiking and biking. It promises to be a race that is hard on the knees.

“The highest peak the racers will cover is only 900 metres,� says Lotta Richter of Saga Adventures. “But over the course of the race they will achieve about 15,000 metres of elevation in total. The peaks are not high but the terrain is very hilly, so they will be up and down a lot, all the time.�

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