Creeking in Northern Quebec

By Nick Troutman

Quicktime, 8.2 MB

Well, after the Niagara gorge, Joel Emily and I decided to go up to Quebec for one last hurrah before I headed back to Tennessee with Emily.

So we packed up the Westfalia, and headed to Ottawa to pick up Joel, and then we were off. We drove all night long to get to the other side of Quebec City, around an 8-hour drive. We arrived at our destination at 12:30am on Saturday morning. With a quick sleep, and sweet dreams, we woke up ready to hunt for some awesome waterfalls.

Joel has a bunch of drops mapped out on his computer using Google Earth. He has like a million rivers mapped out, which made it easier for us to find some falls.

First we went to this little creek on the outside of Mont St. Anne. The creek had some serious gradient, but with too little of water, if made the 70 foot drop into the 3 feet of water, not a good idea. We then went to the Sept Chutes, which was a gold mine. There are like 9 or more just amazing drops, some a better looking than others, but with higher water I think they would all be perfect.

Joel and I decided to go ahead and get wet, so we hiked our way in through some forest until we made our way to the rivers edge. The first drop was this big slide, which reminded me a lot of the Trucha slide in Mexico. Joel went first, and bounced more than both of us had expected, half way down he flipped up onto his side, then accidentally free-wheeled to 20 foot kicker, landed on his side, his skirt popped, and he swim into the swirly eddy. It wasn’t the most promising line, but after some more scouting, I decided to go for it. I went a touch farther right than Joel, missing the knuckle rock that flipped him, and styled the line.

Next was a little 5-foot boof, fallowed by a super clean 20-foot boof. After that was a 25-30 footer, with a narrow boof flake at the top, and a reconnect half way down. This one you could feel, but the lines were good.

Those were the main drops, but after deeper into the canyon was another 5 footer, fallowed by some little rapids, and then a rapid leading into a 20 footer. We didn’t run this one, because there was a huge piton shelf 5 feet off the lip. Though with higher water it might be better. Next was a manky enter to a 30 footer, and a manky rocky slide exit. We wanted to run this last one, but we ended up not having time being that the park closed at 4:30, and we only got to the bottom drop at 4:00.

After that we went to this other river Joel found, in some farmers field. It was fun, but pretty low water. We did a couple runs on a 10 footer, and called it a day.

On Sunday, we went to the Chutes de Shawinagan, and the Shawinigan River. Here we found some good gradient but again, little water. We ran what we could, but with such little water the drops were really manky and the landings were shallow. After Shawinagan we went to Chutes de Sainte Usule. This was awesome but again was low, and to shallow, we opted out. We then went to Chutes de Dorwin, which looked awesome. Though there was a little shelf in the landing, and being it was a 30 foot freefall you wouldn’t want to piton, so we went to the Park de Cascades for a final hope, which ended up to be nothing.

So overall the trip would have been better with more water, so now we are planning to go back in the Spring of 08’.

It was still an amazing trip, and will be awesome next spring.

Here are some pictures; they are a bit grainy being that they are taking form video clips.

Nick Troutman