Camping in Gaspésie National Park

I spent this past week backpacking and camping in Gaspésie National Park in Quebec, Canada. From Montpelier, this was a ten-hour drive during which, for much of it, you drove alongside the Saint Lawerance Seaway. 

With such a long drive, we split it up into two days and spent the first night just outside of Quebec City. To explore a little bit of this old historic city, we took the ferry across the Saint Lawrence for a quick sightseeing of the Old Port District. This was a very cute set of streets that gave a very European vibe, and it was sooo crowded with tourists. We did not stay long, walked around a bit, got some dinner, and headed back on the ferry to continue to the campsite we were staying at that night. A little surprise once we got to camp was that they were having country music night directly outside the large glamping tent we rented. So safe to say things were loud till about eleven o’clock at night. 

The next morning we started our final leg to the park. This was a very beautiful drive along the Saint Lawrence, or it was for about half of it, and then the other half it was raining so we could not see much, ha! The plan was to make dinner at the campground, but with it raining, we decided to wait out the rain a bit and eat in the town just outside the park, Saint-Anne-de-Monts. This town would become a bit of a refuge from the rain for us during the coming week. 

After dinner, we headed to the campground. Driving into the park post-rain was giving the movie Twilight vibes. As in clouds in the pine tree-covered mountains, I’ll put a picture below. Before heading to camp, we stopped at the visitors center that also doubled as a gift shop. Where I bought only things I really needed: sunglasses (as I forgot mine), a hat (as I also forgot mine and it was cute), and a sweatshirt (because I’m on vacation so why not). We then headed to our first car camping campsite called Camping Mont-Albert. This was a beautiful campsite, in the woods with a great shower and bathroom facility, where the showers were free, might I add. We set up camp, chilled, did some knitting, and then got a visit from the park ranger, who told us the hike we planned on doing tomorrow was very, very hard and good luck. With encouragement like that, we went to bed, and I was lulled to sleep in my tent by more rain. 

The next day we started our first leg of the backpacking trip. We planned to hike up Mont Xalibu, a 3,740 ft high mountain that took about four miles to get to the top. About 0.75 miles in, we came to Lac aux Américains; this was a beautiful view of a lake nestled between the mountain range.

After a quick stop there, we headed up the mountain. It was very gradual for the first, but became much steeper as we neared the summit. The last little bit was incredibly rocky, but the views were immaculate. It was giving Jurassic Park and Scottish Highlands had a baby; see picture below. At the top of the mountain, we had lunch at the lookout and then headed back down the other side to our campsite.

The one and a half miles to the campsite was a very gradual down hill were we saw a bunch of caribou scat, but alas no caribou. About 600 meters before our campsite, we stopped for water at two alpine lakes, which were sooo beautiful. After that, we proceeded to our campsite and set up camp. We got there early, and the plan was to drop our bags and head up the next mountain with minimal weight so we could hopefully see some caribou. But the park closes that mountain from 4 pm to 10 am so the caribou can graze and live their lives undisturbed. So we just hung out at the campsite, knitting and reading, until dinner, which we had at the two lakes. 

The next day we headed back the way we came. For a journey that took us about 5 hours before going up the mountain, going down the mountain it took us about 2.5 hours. We had just gotten to the car and drove to the visitor center to check on whether a shuttle spot opened for our next backpacking stint. While we were doing that, it started raining quite a bit. At this point, I had gotten a bit overwhelmed with being cold and wet and uncomfortable all the time and had no desire to go back out. We decided to wait out the rain as best we could for the day and then hike the mile out to our next campsite. Staying dry all day was the best option we could have done.

Around dinner time, we took this incredibly long remote dirt road out to our campsite, where we saw two cars. We proceeded to start hiking to the site when a lady came out from a cabin to talk to us. She told us they had gone past our site that day and it was a real mission. We took that as it had been pouring and that was what was hard for them. Come to find out, when we turned off the road to the trail, it was also the trail conditions that were a mission. This was a trail that was not very well traveled. It was completely overgrown, and plank bridges were sunk and broken in mud. So for our mile-and-a-half trek to our sight a portion of it was through ankle-deep mud while having wet ferns run along you, leaving you completely wet from head to toe. This was a bit of a breaking point for me. We were able to get to our site in the middle of a raspberry patch where we were the only campers, and I decided that tomorrow I would hike out and find a place to stay for the night and get dry while my roommate continued the trail. Let it be known that she was very much having a good time and wanted to keep going and had all the safety precautions to do so. 

So after spending the night at the completely secluded but very beautiful site, I hiked out to my car, and she kept going to the next backpacking site. We would meet up the next day at the final car camping site as we planned. On my drive out on this 20km road with minimal traffic, I picked up a hitch hiker whos family was staying at the cabin and had reached a bit of a breaking point as well, so he was going to get his car to pick them up. Arriving back at the car camping campsite of Lac Cascapedia, where we were planning to camp the next night, I went into the information hut and asked if there were any last-minute cancellations for that night. Luckily there was one, and I was able to stay there and wait for my roommate to finish her backpacking leg. 

I had a wonderful time at that campsite where I was able to shower and then spent the day reading ( I finished both Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier and Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain; I highly recommend both books) and also knitted. It was the perfect recharge day I needed. After spending the night, I had to leave my site and then wait for our other site to open up, so I spent the day in a similar fashion of reading by the lake, again another perfect day in my opinion. My roommate made it to camp that night, and we had dinner, then turned in quite early for the night. Waking up the next morning, we had planned to split the 9h and 45min drive into two days, but I being antsy to get home and from the Midwest decided that it would be fine to do the whole drive in one day. We made it back home around 7 pm and were able to get some wonderful sleep in my bed after a week of sleeping on the ground. 

I feel like this post may have a negative tone to it, so I want to clarify that I just wanted to share the events as they happened. But this park was sooo beautiful and truly an amazing experience that I hope to do again at some point. Maybe with a little less rain though. Sometimes backpacking trips don’t go as planned. Backpacking is not the most comfortable experience; you are walking long miles with a pack, eating food you don’t usually eat, sleeping on the hard ground, and usually wet and cold for a good portion of it. When I was researching my PCT hike in 2022, I read somewhere that when backpacking, it is a good chance that you will not enjoy yourself 85% of the time, but the other 15% will be so amazing that it will make up for it. And this is true. The views, the nature, and the disconnect from our current world were so very relaxing and amazing that after trudging through a foot of mud, I considered keeping going. But I am not that hardcore yet and needed a little dry R&R time. This trip was amazing, and it was really cool to see a part of the world I had never heard of before this year. I hope you all enjoy this post and the pictures that go along with it! 

View More Photos Here!