campsite
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Fran and I spent the weekend familiarizing ourselves with the Pittsburg border peaks in preparation for this winter. An approach from the US side appears to be out of the question, for us, unless the logging roads are open. So we headed to Chartierville, Quebec to drive the country roads looking for a way up to these peaks from the north. There were 2 obvious candidates: Rang Brise-Culottes and Chemin St-Paul. The former is the first road on the right after Customs. The latter heads to the east from the center of the village. The ends of these 2 parallel roads apparently are linked by gravel 4-wheeler trails. We followed St-Paul for 4 miles until the point where the road is no longer plowed in winter. We then continued for .6 miles, up to a 4-wheeler trail which heads up to Boundary Pond, according to a camp owner who spoke of several 4-wheeler access routes to the border, and also offered to rent us his camp next winter. We will be exploring these potential routes to Boundary Pond next weekend.
After leaving the camp owner, we headed to Rang 10 Ouest, to the point ( 5 miles) where Sentiers Frontaliers crosses the road, just before a small bridge. We followed the trail about 1.5 miles until it crossed and recrossed a major dirt road. Here we met some 4-wheelers who were more than helpful (those beer bottles in their pockets were probably the reason) to give us shortcut routes to the summit of d'Urban, and to offer us the use of their hunting camp. For whatever reason, we decided to follow their advice re: shortcutting the trail, and followed their slurred instructions for getting to the border swath via 4-wheeler routes. Fortunately they were right, and we ended up much closer to d'Urban than we would have if we had followed the official trail. We never found the summit cannister on d'Urban - we'll look closer for it next winter.
After leaving the camp owner, we headed to Rang 10 Ouest, to the point ( 5 miles) where Sentiers Frontaliers crosses the road, just before a small bridge. We followed the trail about 1.5 miles until it crossed and recrossed a major dirt road. Here we met some 4-wheelers who were more than helpful (those beer bottles in their pockets were probably the reason) to give us shortcut routes to the summit of d'Urban, and to offer us the use of their hunting camp. For whatever reason, we decided to follow their advice re: shortcutting the trail, and followed their slurred instructions for getting to the border swath via 4-wheeler routes. Fortunately they were right, and we ended up much closer to d'Urban than we would have if we had followed the official trail. We never found the summit cannister on d'Urban - we'll look closer for it next winter.
