It was a dark and stormy day.Not really stormy, but really cold. I regret that I picked that day for the trip. What made it worse was that it was the election day. Many services were closed. We had to seek secondary activities (the primary one is climbing the one-fifth of the mountain). Unfortunately, there was none. There was a helicopter tour though, which must have been cool but obviously super-expensive. So the only choice was to climb the mountain!
This is my theory: the mountain already has tracks that were “diggen”. Each one has a level, in terms of difficulty. Only one of the tracks dose not touch the top of the mountain. So I guess that’s the easiest one (It is the “Ruisseaux” track). For sure we took the track that leads to the top which is called “Grand-Brule”. Our goal was to reach the beaver dam. The problem was that we started climbing around 1 PM, so we didn’t have a chance to make it too far.
Another theory that I am 99% sure. The tracks all have a flag representing them. So the Grand-Brute is a rectangle that is half red and half white. They painted this flag on different trees on the mountain, which means….Guess! Well, obviously, it’s to show the track or you will completely get lost in the shadowy mountain. Why shadowy? Look at the first sentence!
Because my mom can’t really climb as she has not fully recovered from her suregery, only dad and I headed for the mountain. She stayed in a restaurant, reading books. Poor mommy : ）
We started the journey with the track “Ruisseaux” because all the tracks are connected.
A lot of people just climbed there to see the little waterfall. Splash! By the way why did I say that “Ruisseaux” track was easy? For the reason I said before, and that there were a lot of bridges, stairs, and things like that that helps you to balance.
When “Ruisseaux” and “Grand-Brule” merged together, there is a sign indicating the next 12 routes. We were not sure which track we should pick. Dad just went on with the Grand-Brule track. I followed him.
The first part was kind of hard. We entered an orange and yellow forest, with a lot of giant rocks. What we did was only to follow the flags on the tree. Then we realized that we didn’t have any climbing equipment, which will be necessary in order to go waaaaaaaaaayy up to the top of the mountain. Without that, you are doomed. At one point, when were just entering a more dense forest, my dad asked if we can return because a forest is dangerous. Probably he saw too much horrid movies. I continued. We arrived at a big rock with a superb view on the Mont-Tremblant’s “little city”. We took some photos, then continued our route.
We arrived at a vast area without trees. It was a big relief to me that we saw the signs and the map. We saw a guy climbing the mountain like us, but he was running. We followed him, but he quickly disappeared from our view.
The route was more difficult now, there was some ice. We did our best not to slide and fall into the void. I am exaggerating. But you know, slipping and then consequently breaking an arm hurts. We wanted to avoid that. Sometimes I needed my dad’s help. All was correct. Then we saw a group of 5 people coming back. They said that there was a dear up there and that they fed him. We thanked them and continued our ascension.
We arrived at another vast place without trees. There were three rocks as the size of a sofa. That was when we saw the dear. It was there, eating some plants with its head down to the ground. We took a lot of photos of it and the perfect view of the little city under us. I relaxed a little bit on one of the “rock-the-size-of-a-sofa” and drank some water. Now, the final mission: return to the restaurant where my mom was.
As every experienced climbers know, the descent is the more tricky and perilous one. Know why? Easy. You accidentally fall, and you finish in hospital. Or, you finish going to the pharmacie buying some Band-aids. Either way. And the most important thing to do for us before the descent is… Guess! Easy. Put the professional camera in the bag.
When my dad explained the dangers of the descent, I immediately cut a large branch from a tree with my karate technique. Now I have a support! I should have thought about that when we started.
The level of danger of “The danger zone” is normal danger times 3. The zone of ice, more. At least I have this fortune stick. The descent was way quicker than I imagined. At no time, we were already searching for our mom. We found her in the restaurant. Perfect! Then we returned home.
BTW I found a super-extra-mega grant stick at the entrance of Mont-Tremblant, 4 times bigger than mine. Maybe next year, it could serve me for something.
It gets better
when we arrived the Korean restaurant.
Coffee and toilet while waiting
