LAURENTIAN MOUNTAINS, Canada– Snow crunched loudly underfoot as a group of skiers gathered in sub-zero temperatures for the start of a 27-mile, three-day backcountry ski trek across southern Quebec province.
"These are the best conditions we've had in years!" gushed Will Hotopf, project manager of Les Routes Blanches, a company that offers ski tours with meals and overnight accommodations along 75 miles of trails northwest of Montreal.
"We're trying to reinvigorate and revive the tradition of skiing from village to village and from hut to hut and from inn to inn in the Laurentian mountains," said Hotopf, as he led the group of four skiers along the network's rustic western route.
The trail follows mountain ridgelines, crosses frozen lakes and winds through forests of black spruce, red and white pine. Sometimes the branches brush up close to the skiers, causing dollops of snow that cover just about everything to fall to the ground with a soft whump.
The terrain along this route is not extreme– in many areas, houses are visible off in the distance, and parts of the trail even wind through neighborhoods.
But over much of it, skiers are able to enjoy the peace and stillness of the forest, when the only sounds are heavy breathing and the shrup shrup shrup of skis on cold snow.
"It's really beautiful…even spiritual," mused Hotopf.
The ups and downs of backcountry skiing
To ski through these woods requires specialized equipment; something between the heavy downhill skis with locked-in boots and the skinny cross-country skis featured in Olympic relays.
The backcountry nordic skis used here are lightweight, with metal edges to help with turns and a grippy undercoating for uphill climbs. For even more traction, skiers affix sticky synthetic skins to the undersides.
To allow for more movement, backcountry ski boots are not clamped down at the heel, and poles can be made longer or shorter.
There are no chairlifts, so for every whooping descent there's a climb up, which skier Michael Dunkerley considered a good opportunity to warm up when the temperatures drop.
"We were all stressing a little bit about the extreme cold," laughed Dunkerley, who was out on the trail with a self-guided group from Massachusetts. "I'm kind of new at this, but the conditions were amazing and we survived!"
An added bonus of the extreme cold? Icicle stir-sticks for a batch of après-ski cocktails at his overnight stop, a heated yurt near the village of Sainte-Agathe-des-Mont.
"Narwhals," Dunkerly dubbed the negroni-like drinks. "They're spectacular!"
"It's what we love about it up here," added fellow skier Brian Toohey. "You come here and everyone is embracing and enjoying winter and celebrating it."
A tradition that goes back more than a century
Beginning in the 1920s, "snow trains" brought skiers by the thousands from the city of Montreal to these rural villages in the southern Laurentian Mountains.
"I remember hearing about the parties that went on on those ski trains," smiled Robert Shelso. The 82-year-old is on the board of directors for the Laurentian Ski Museum in Morin Heights.
During the 1938-39 winter alone, Shelso said, the Canadian Pacific ski trains reportedly brought in more than 111,000 skiers to the region. "Skiers stayed in local inns. I mean, it had a huge, huge impact on this area."
By the 1960s, however, skiers were opting for lift service at designated ski areas, and driving instead of taking the train. The historic trails began to disappear, and many of the inns closed.
A wintertime boost for the region
Over the past few decades, private landowners, conservation groups and municipal leaders have been trying to protect and restore the region's old ski trails, seeing their potential to boost the winter economy.
"This is an economic engine. This is tourism," said James Jackson, who heads a trail preservation nonprofit that oversees Les Routes Blanches.
"In the early 1990s the province had a little bit of foresight and said, when we make new subdivisions, we're going to put in a park tax," said Jackson.
The provincial rule requires developers to hand over 10% of a sale's cash value, or 10 percent of the land, to be used for trails or other green space.
Jackson says now, those public right-of-ways are jumpstarting a century-old style of village-to-village tourism that's allowing locals and tourists to enjoy the outdoors.
Max Raymond offers a luggage shuttle service for those who prefer not to carry their bags on the trail. Previously, he worked mostly with cyclists in the summer months, but "now I'm busy all year."
"It's had a great impact," agreed Claude Menard, one of the owners of a bed and breakfast that he said used to only be open on the weekends, but now operates every day. "75% of our winter guests are skiing on the trail."
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