Lanaudiere - continuing explorations in the northeast section

Northern Lanaudiere, hills, forests, farms, chalets, and hills!


Long time readers know our obsession with the excellent scenery, backroads, and hills of the Lanaudiere region northeast of Montreal (think: eastern Laurentians). It's not too far from the city, the road quality is usually very good, and the traffic to come back home is generally trouble-free.

We visited on Sunday for a 90 km ride expanding a bit on our Best-ever-Lanaudiere-ride of last year. Specifically, we explored some backroads between St-Jean de Matha and St-Damien.

The result was excellent! over 1100 metres of climbing, and don't forget our reason for enduring the climbing: there's 1100 metres of descending too!

We touched much of our favorite sections of the region on this ride, and again, they were definitely excellent. There were many other cyclists out on the back roads of this region, in fact more than we have ever seen before!

Although we skipped a potential southern half to this ride, we will return later in the season to combine it all together for a ride that tours all around St-Jean de Matha (our parking spot of choice). This is a route with numerous bail-out points to return to the car in case one has had enough hills for one day!)

Here is the bikely map to this ride. Please note that the western section (Ste-Beatrix) loops south and then north.


Bikely map for this spring hill-climb Lanaudiere ride