Northern Lanaudiere exploration 2008

First Lanaudiere ride of 2008, and third week of new-road explorations too.
The route map of the ride is on Bikely.

Do you have the fever?

The fever to get out and ride?

To get out and ride some place that isn't on Montreal island?

To visit some place you know is great for bicycle riding?

Cycle Fun Montreal knows how you feel. We have the cure too.



Fever cured; and the open road was clean and dry

We headed out to our fav destination, St-Jean-de-Matha in the northern Lanaudiere, about an hour 20 minutes from Montreal, and the site of many of our favorite rides.

First problem, we park the car in a parking lot with fresh snow on the ground. Hmmm. The roads were dry. So, we figure, don't worry be happy. It worked!


Winter had not yet left northern Lanaudiere

So we got on the bikes and rode, and everything turned out ok. There were some dry roads, wet roads, sandy roads, wet and sandy roads, good roads, and lots of hills. And it snowed, but just little flurries, not anything that accumulated or caused us any trouble at all. Just some minor spring-very-early-season adversity.

Our rides here continue to be a source of exploration.

Today's exploration was an over-the hills shortcut to St-Damien. This turned out ok, and it was... extra hilly too. The was expected, and what was hoped was that it was all asphalt, which it was. A nice little option for future rides, we concluded.

We took Lac Mondor -> ch. de Cascade-> Principal to get to St-Damien (de Brandon).



Scenic new roads: spring melt means summer is coming!

Once in St-Damien we headed out to St-Emilie de l'Energie, and then back on Feuille de l'erable/riviere blanche (same road, good climb) and directly back to St-Jean de Matha.

Almost directly, that is, because we were close to St-Jean-de-Matha when we noticed we would not have 60 km of distance. We sould have less than 60 km. Hmmm, our achievement/ambition gland indicated that we had better raise the ride distance to 60 km.


Slightly amused horses watching our extra 8 km descent/climb

Luckily there is a fun little road at the entrance to St-Jean de Matha, it leads down to the Regional Park on the riviere Assomption, so we got one last climb and an extra 8 km of distance. This took our total nicely over 60 km, It doesn't sound like much, but there is significant hillage on rides in this area: this is why we keep returning here!


Louis Cyr welcoming me back to St-Jean-de-la-Matha

Here's the link to the route map of the ride on Bikely.


Returning for a dropped glove... the other one is the little dot 100 feet further.
Spring roads are sometimes not perfect!