| Summary | None |
| Owner | Eric Gilbertson |
| Creation Date | 2013-02-24 21:25:02 UTC-0500 |
| Description | Gaspe Peninsula, Quebec in a Blizzard
Eric and Matthew Gilbertson Feb15-18 New snowfall: 2ft in two days Max wind: 100mph (according to newspaper) Min visibility while driving: 5 ft Miles of snow-covered roads driven on: ~1000 miles Total distance driven: 1759 miles Friday: camp north of Bangor, ME Saturday: Drive to Forillon National Park, Gaspe, Quebec. Ski to campsite Sunday: XC ski along coast, take swim in icy ocean, drive to Gaspe National Park Monday: Drive back to Boston Link to video of driving in a blizzard in Maine Link to video of driving in a blizzard in Gaspe “So, um, is there anything we can do to make this process…smoother in the future?” Matthew asked the customs agent innocently. We were sitting in the US customs office in Fort Kent, Maine, trying to get back in to the US from Quebec. The customs agents had just finished questioning us for the last half hour, and now one of them was walking outside to give our car a thorough inspection. “Well, it really comes down to this: we need to believe that you’re telling us the truth,” the agent responded matter-of-factly. For some reason they didn’t believe that we had driven 14 hours from Boston for the weekend to go skiing and camping in the Gaspe Peninsula, Quebec, in the middle of the worst blizzard in years. -- We had originally planned to drive to northen Nova Scotia for the weekend to make a [potentially first] winter ascent of White Hill, the tallest mountain in the province. But Friday afternoon we changed plans at the last minute and decided to instead check out someplace new in Canada, and the Gaspe Peninsula fit the bill. We didn’t have time to check the weather forecast for the Gaspe, but assumed it would be wintery and that sounded fun. We made it a little north of Bangor, Maine by 1am and found a secluded patch of woods to pitch our tent for the night. In the morning we woke up to snow falling, and snow would continue to fall on us for the next 48 hours. We continued up I-95, and the road was completely unplowed, with an inch or two of snow on the pavement seriously slowing us down. The Canadian customs agent in Houlton, ME didn’t even flinch when we told her our plan to drive to Gaspe, and we quickly continued north into New Brunswick. We stopped at a grocery store for lunch, and decided to ask the clerk about the weather. “So is this snow going to last much longer?” Matthew asked. “Oh yeah, we’re in for a huge storm,” the women replied. We’d heard Boston was supposed to get a couple inches of snow over the weekend, but that should be no big deal up here in Quebec. Could they really be in for a blizzard up there? We began to regret not taking a peek at the forecast before leaving town. The snow continued to fall as we headed north in New Brunswick to coastal town of Campbelton. Here we crossed a bridge over the Chaleur Bay into Quebec, and noticed that the water underneath was completely frozen. We’d never seen frozen ocean before. Even more interesting was a collection of ice fishing houses and cars out in the middle of the bay. “How often do you get a chance to drive out on sea ice?” Matthew asked. “We’d better take advantage of this opportunity,” I responded. We turned off the main road towards the coast, and followed some tire tracks across the beach to the edge of the ice. Matthew carefully inched the car onto the ice, and then continued driving all the way out to the ice houses. I’m pretty sure the rental car company would have been terrified if they saw us doing this to their car, but nowhere in the rental agreement did it specifically prohibit driving onto a frozen ocean, so we were probably ok. I snapped some pictures out on the ice, and after briefly getting stuck in the snow we turned back to shore and continued driving north. Every three or four hours we’d rotate drivers, and by sunset we’d reached the town of Perce on the northeastern tip of the Gaspe Peninsula. The snow had continued unabated, and just outside of Perce we came to the base of a large hill that had somehow not been plowed. It was covered in at least a few inches of snow and ice. I didn’t have much experience driving in the snow, but gunned the engine at the bottom to give me enough momentum to reach the top of the hill without slipping. Somehow I hadn’t gone fast enough, and just below the top the car slowed to a standstill, with the wheels slipping in the snow. We were completely stopped in the middle of the road on the hill, unable to move, so I quickly turned on the blinkers and honked a few times in case other cars were coming. The hill was steep enough that pushing the car wasn’t an option. Going in reverse to the bottom and trying again might work, but I first tried turning the wheels sideways to let the car ascend at a less steep angle. Somehow this allowed the wheels to gain traction. I kept making switchbacks up the hill until we finally crested the top. Before the next hills I made sure to gain extra speed, and managed to not get stuck any more. We stopped in the town of Gaspe to fill up on gas, and then drove into Forillon National Park. The roads in the park were even worse than the main roads, but we found a semi-plowed pullout near the top of a pass in the park, and after enhancing it with some snowshoe-shoveling parked the car there for the night. We threw a bunch of overnight gear in out packs, strapped on our xc skis, and skied up a trail for half an hour before making camp. In the morning we skied back to the car and drove down to a road that would theoretically reach the beach. The road was gated, though, with a foot of snow on top. It was only a mile to the beach, so we parked and skied out to the end of the road. The ocean off the coast of Forillon was beautiful – it was partially frozen with mini icebergs floating around. We realized this would be the perfect location for a true polar bear plunge. We’d swam in the arctic ocean in the summer before in Norway, but there wasn’t any ice or snow so it didn’t feel very polar. We’d also tried to swim in Hudson Bay in April, but it was frozen solid so we’d had to settle for swimming in the meltwater pools on top of the ice. This was different, though. It was the North Atlantic in the middle of winter, and we’d have to push ice chunks out of the way and jump through surface slush to get to the water. How could you get more polar than that? We skied around for another hour to generate lots of body heat, and then prepared for the plunge. Matthew went first, quickly stripping off most of his clothes, tiptoeing through the snow barefoot, and jumping in. I went next, plunging under the ice for several milliseconds before jumping back out to shore. For some reason my body got really warm shortly after I left the water but before I’d put clothes back on. This must have been the body’s way of trying to combat the severe cold I had just subjected it to. We both layered up as quickly as possible and started skiing again to generate body heat. Soon we could feel our fingers and toes again, and our bodies were back to normal. By the time we reached the car the plows had already started plowing the roads, and the driving was fairly easy out of the park. We drove along the northern coast of the Gaspe Peninsula through the small villages of Riviere-au-Renard, Cloridorme, and Grand-Vallee. Still the snow continued to fall, and the roads continued to be treacherous. For some reason the trucks would plow the roads, but never salt them. They must have known that much more snow was coming, and that salting the roads would just result in a slushy slippery mess. The strategy up in the Gaspe is to plow intermittently and only salt the roads when the last of the snow has finished. Even when the road was plowed, though, snow would quickly drift back over because of the intense wind coming off the ocean. At times the visibility was only a few car lengths in front of us. We’d later read that gusts of up to 100mph were recorded along the coast, and I’d believe that based on our drive. We passed miles of huge cliffs next to the frozen ocean, with long frozen waterfalls coming down that would surely attract ice climbers in better conditions. By dusk we turned inland at Sainte-Anne-des-Monts and headed towards Gaspe National Park. The roads off the coast were definitely in worse condition, but Matthew drove expertly to the middle of the park and into the Mt Albert campground. We tried in vain for half an hour to find a place to pay, but eventually gave up. We’d come late enough that all the buildings were closed. There was some sort of cross-country ski race wrapping up for the day and tons of people around the park, but apparently we were the only ones planning to camp out that night. The road into the campground was covered in a few feet of snow, so we loaded up our gear in our packs and skied in to a good spot. We pitched the tent on the snow, cooked some cous-cous for dinner, and went to bed around 7:30pm. The snow still hadn’t stopped falling since Saturday morning, and periodically throughout the night we’d shake the tent so the snow piling up could sluff off. I noticed every time I got up that the volume of the tent seemed to be shrinking, like the walls were coming in closer to us. I was tired enough that I didn’t bother to investigate, until 3:45am when I crawled outside to go to the bathroom. A full foot of new snow had fallen since we’d gone to bed, and it was crushing our poor little three-season tent. All the snow we’d shaken off the top had piled up on the sides and was crushing and warping the tent. “Are you done sleeping?” Matthew asked. “Because we could just start driving back to Boston now before the tent gets more crushed and before the roads get even worse.” “I agree, let’s get out of here,” I replied. We dragged the tent out of the snow, packed our bags, and skied back to the car by 4:30am. The same foot of snow that had crushed our tent had also covered the parking lot, and no plows had bothered to come in. Our car was an agonizing 60ft from the road, and we didn’t have any shovels to plow. I tried in vain to drive through the snow, but the car got stuck within the first five feet in the deep snow. The only option was to use our snowshoes and plow the parking lot ourselves. For the next hour we scooped a car-width path out of the snow with our snowshoes, finally reaching the semi-plowed main road at 5:30am. I triumphantly drove out onto the main road, and turned right to leave the park. Luckily for us the road was completely downhill to the coast. A plow had apparently gone through a few hours ago, but only in one direction so 1.5 lanes were sort of plowed. By now, though, there were several inches of packed snow on the road so there was still a high risk of skidding. I drove carefully, relying on the snow-driving skills I’d honed over Saturday and Sunday, and we made it to the coast without issue. Theoretically we were 14 hours from Boston, but we knew it would take much longer in these conditions. We drove down the coast along the St Lawrence Seaway to Rivier-du-Loupe, and amazingly at 11am the snow stopped and the skies turned blue. The wind was still as ferocious as ever, though, and the temperature was in the single digits. At St Alexandre we turned east, aiming to re-enter the US in Northern Maine. We followed 289 until we reached Lake Pohenegamook, but were stopped by a line of trucks in front of us and a policeman in the road. The policeman walked over to us, but didn’t speak any English, and our French was pretty rusty. At one point it sounded like he was saying the road was closed, but then he said we could go, so we continued driving into the town of Pohenegamook. The wind coming off the lake was ferocious, and it blew so much snow across the road that visibility was practically zero. We noticed that we were near the northernmost tip of Maine in this town, so drove on a side road and touched our toes on the official monument. When we pulled back onto the main road another policewoman drove up to us and made it explicit that the road ahead was impassable due to the snow and we’d have to find another way around. “We could probably drive through that, based on what we’ve already driven through,” I observed, “but now this police lady is watching us.” “Yeah, we’d better find another way around,” Matthew said. Unfortunately the only way around was to drive a half hour back up to the St Lawrence Seaway and continue down a different road to Maine. An hour and a half later we finally reached the Maine border in Fort Kent, and that’s when our troubles really started. “Hello, welcome to the US,” the border agent said to me as I handed him our passports through the car window. “What was your business in Canada?” “We drove up to the Gaspe Peninsula to go camping,” I responded. “How long were you in Canada?” he asked, his face expressionless. “Just for the weekend,” I replied. “Now we’re headed back home to Boston.” He stared at me for a moment, then scanned the passports and looked at his computer screen. “Pull aside to the parking lot and walk inside,” he said. “I’ll bring your passports in.” This didn’t sound good. Last time something like this happened, when we were driving to Hudson Bay for the weekend, the agents had given our car a full inspection. I pulled over and we both walked inside. Another agent was waiting inside with our passports. “What were you guys doing in Canada?” Agent 2 asked. “We drove up to the Gaspe Peninsula to go camping for the weekend,” Matthew responded. “You drove to the Gaspe in this blizzard?” Agent 2 asked. “Nobody goes camping in the Gaspe this time of year. And where did you come from in the US?” “Yeah, it was fun!” I responded. “We got a foot of snow on our tent last night. We didn’t really know this was coming – probably should have looked at the forecast before. We’re grad students at MIT in Boston, so wanted a long road trip and some camping to de-stress.” “I’ll need to take your car keys. Are you bringing any prescription medications back?” he asked. “Um, no” Matthew responded, handing him the keys. “We have a rental car.” “Did you meet or do you have any friends in Canada?” he asked. “We didn’t meet any friends, but we have some friends at school who are Canadian,” I replied. I don’t think that’s what he had in mind. “Now why didn’t you guys cross in Houlton? Why did you choose this crossing?” he asked. “We’ve never crossed here before,” Matthew replied. “We try to cross at a different place every time we go to Canada. We tried to cross at Pohenegamook, but the police said the road was closed there.” “Do you have any prescription medications with you?” “No,” I replied. Didn’t he already ask us that? “Why not go to Katahdin if you wanted to go camping for the weekend?” he asked. “We’ve already been there a bunch of times,” I replied. “Gaspe sounded much more fun.” “Have a seat over there,” Agent 2 said, pointing to a set of chairs in the corner. He walked back to look at his computer screen, leaving our car keys on the counter. I picked up the car keys, not wanting them to be forgotten. “No, you’ll leave those right on the counter,” he said sternly to me. We walked quietly to the seats and sat down. Slowly we were piecing together what he must be thinking, based on our responses and our border-crossing history. Two college-age guys rented a car, drove up to Quebec, met some friends, picked up a bunch of drugs, and are trying to smuggle them back to the US. These college-guys do this regularly, and never cross at the same place twice. They’re testing each crossing to find a weakness. They needed a cover story, so came up with a camping trip to the Gaspe as their alibi. It’s not a very good alibi, because it’s not very believable that someone would drive that far from Boston in a weekend to go camping during the worst blizzard in years. “Stay there, I’m going to inspect your car,” the agent told us as he pulled his jacket on and walked outside. I got the sense he was thinking ‘I’m gonna nail these kids.’ I was actually kind of nervous at that point. We didn’t have anything to hide except a bunch of wet, smelly camping gear, but he acted so confident we were lying to him that I almost felt guilty of something. That was crazy, though. We’d done nothing wrong and told the truth about everything. We waited, staring at the wall, as he meticulously sifted through every piece of gear in the car. Ten agonizing minutes later the door opened and Agent 2 stepped back inside. “I’ve got to hand it to you guys,” he said with a smile, “you must have actually been telling us the truth. It must have been cold up there with those big sleeping bags you have, and those handwarmers.” Handwarmers? I thought to myself. Those were buried pretty deep in my gear. He must have looked through *everything* if he saw those. “You’re headed all the way to Boston tonight? Good luck,” he said, handing us the keys and passports. We let out big sighs of relief as we walked back out to the car. Indeed, we were still at least 7 or 8 hours from Boston and by now it was 2:30pm. I took the wheel and we started driving south on Highway 11, another new road for us. We thought the roads would improve in the US, but within a few hours of crossing in we experience the most dangerous stretch of winter conditions of the whole weekend. Just south of Ashland the forests opened up to farmland and the snow started drifting over the road. The road was very icy, and we actually passed a few cars that had skidded off the side. At one point I came to a stop sign at the bottom of a hill that was unplowed. I reluctantly stopped, then skidded as I tried to climb the hill and came to a halt. For some reason the lane for oncoming traffic was partially plowed, so I just drove up on that side quickly, before other cars could come. Shortly after that hill we caught up to a truck driving slowly with flashing lights on top. We followed closely behind, as the snow started drifting violently across the road. At one point the visibility was so bad I couldn’t even see the front of our car. I slowed way down, turned on the blinkers, and honked the horn periodically so other cars would know I was there. I could just barely see some flashing lights ahead that must have been that escort truck. The truck drove in the left lane, then through a 10-inch snow drift across the middle of the road. We made it through the worst part without incident, and the escort truck then turned around to help the next car. We encountered more miles of this dangerous drifting, but by sunset had reached I-95, and could finally rest easy that we were on a safe road. We reached Boston by 11pm, for the end of an exciting wintery weekend. |