Trail run in the Gatineau Hills

As I mentioned in a previous article, I had itchy feet to head up to to the Gatineau Hills for a "real" trail run on some more technical trails. This weekend I seized on the opportunity and headed up there as the sun was rising. It was minus 6°C when I left so I layered up and equipped myself with my light running pack, a copy of a small section of the trail map, a whistle (just in case I ran into any black bears or coyotes), plenty of water and snacks, gloves, hat, and of course, my trusty trail shoes.

I drove up to the park and parked my car at P7 (Kingsmere). My plan was to head up #30 to #1 and then do the Skyline Trail (#6) followed by a loop of #17/#8 and then back to the car park (link to Gatineau Park trail map).

It was frozen underfoot so took it pretty easy and walked up some of the steeper inclines, stopping often to enjoy the spectacular views from Skyline Trail in particular. My route covered 8.85 kilometers and  nearly 300 meters (~985 feet) of elevation gain.

The trails themselves were everything I had imagined, loads of roots, rocks, streams, some big steep slopes, really gnarly in places so a lot of fun. I am extremely new to trail running so I kept the pace right down as I had to keep watchful eye on the trail a few feet in front of me so I could step over the safest route. 

Here are a few examples of the terrain I was running over:

A decent incline here with plenty of rocks and a huge rock at the top. Those huge rocks are commonplace in Gatineau Park, I assume that they were left behind when the glaciers melted at the end of the ice age, some of them are absolutely huge.

A nice sweeping bend with few obstructions, I met another runner coming down as I was heading up and he was absolutely flying down the slope.

Nice and soft underfoot, this is one of the sections that you can throw caution to the wind and really attack the slope.

These trails are full of little steams like this one, the rocks in the middle were coated in a layer of ice, so were pretty treacherous.

Another view of the same stream.

Picking up some decent speed on a snowy section of the trail.

Here is a view from Wattsford's lookout (intersection of #30 and #1) looking down over Gatineau Park towards a sleepy looking Hull and downtown Ottawa. The sun had not long risen. The major road in the middle of the photograph is highway 5.

All in all it was a great run, really challenging and the conditions were excellent. I will definitely head back up here in the next couple of weeks and explore a few of the other trails that the park has to offer.