Flying to Quebec’s Blueberry Route
This summer M and I had a chance to combine two of our passions. Well…two of my passions, and two of M’s “sigh, I guess if you really enjoy it, I’ll come along” activities. Flying and cycling.
Earlier this year, we made the decision that we would do the full 5-day cycling route around Lac Saint-Jean in Quebec. It’s a supported 256 km route that starts in Alma Quebec and roughly follows the shores of Lac Saint-Jean through the heart of Quebec’s blueberry-growing region, all the way around until you return to Alma. Along the way, you get to see cute little Quebec towns, farms, national parks, rolling blueberry fields, and of course the beautiful lake itself, as you cycle along a mix of dedicated bicycle paths and rural roads.
If you haven’t done much cycling in Quebec, I can tell you that this province is amazing. The cycling and support infrastructure is second-to-none. There are organizations that will rent you fully kitted out bicycles if you want, as well as transport your luggage from one stop to the next all the way around the lake, so you don’t need to worry about lugging all your gear with you.
But before we could start the cycling part of the holiday, we needed to get there. Our choices were to drive about 11 hours from Toronto to Alma, or fly the 4.5 hour route. Not much of a choice really. Not only would it shorten the travel time significantly, but I’d arrive in Alma less tired, and of course I’d get to fly us to a new destination.
We decided to split up the route to Alma by taking a slightly scenic route over Montreal and past Quebec City, with a lunch stop in Trois-Rivieres. This would add about an hour to the flying time, but we’d enjoy the trip a lot more – always an important consideration when M is along for the ride.
I’ve flown the route northeast from Oshawa toward either Ottawa or Montreal many times, so that was familiar territory. But I’d never flown past Montreal before, and I was both excited about getting deeper into la belle province, but also a little apprehensive about flying into territory where the predominant air traffic language would be French. It would sorely test the French that I learned growing up but haven’t used much in 30 years.
It wasn’t as bad as I expected, as I remember enough of it that I was able to pick up the key bits of info being relayed among local pilots. And thankfully ATC is fluent in English throughout the country and will communicate with you in your preferred language, even deep in Quebec. So the flight to Trois-Rivieres (which means Three Rivers, FYI) was pretty uneventful. We stopped in the brand-spanking new terminal for lunch. Unfortunately, the terminal is so new that the restaurant isn’t open yet, so we were reduced to eating whatever snacks we had left over from the flight, and then heading out.
And this is where things got a little hairy. These days, it seems like every summer is full of wildfires across Canada, and that can often cause problems with visibility in the lower altitudes. The haze from the wildfires had been moving east across Ontario and Quebec, and I knew it might be an issue for our second leg from Trois-Rivieres to Alma. Thankfully I’m instrument rated and had the option of just filing an IFR flight plan and not worrying about it. But that would have ruined any chance of doing some sightseeing as we flew by Quebec City.
After taking off from Trois-Rivieres, the haze started to envelop us around 1500′ AL. As we got closer to Quebec City and started to see the outlines of the city, the haze had descended down to about 1000′ AGL, and there was just no way to safely fly VFR all the way. So I called up ATC and asked for a pop-up IFR clearance. They were nice enough to route me around the east side of Quebec City, up the St. Lawrence River, so we did get a little bit of a view of the city – but not much through the haze. Despite that, I’m very thankful that I was able to call on my instrument rating – without that, we would have had to set down somewhere and wait out the haze, and there was no knowing if we would be able to make it to Alma that day or not. And that would have put our cycling trip in jeopardy.
Thankfully the rest of the flight was pretty straightforward. We even broke out of the haze about 50 miles south of Alma, and I was able to do a straightforward visual approach into the Alma airport. We called a cab, loaded Mruna, her bike and our luggage into it, and I hopped on my bike and rode the 6 km from the airport to the hotel. We had time to explore the city a bit, with its beautiful river rapids and cut downtown restaurant area, and the next day we were off to ride the full route.
In the next post, I’ll talk through the route and the first couple of days of riding.
