Reserve faunique Rouge-Matawin photos

lac des sucreries

lac des sucreries

Lac Jamet

Lac Jamet

Spot 1 Lac Jamet

Ruffed Grouse

Ruffed Grouse

Loon

Lac des cinqs doigts

Lac des cinqs doigts

Lac des cinqs doigts

Cascades

cascades

Camping at Lac des Sucreries at Rouge-Matawin

So this was my second attempt to go to the Rouge-Matawin wildlife reserve. We had not gone camping yet this year and after all this time we decided we should. My head is still sore but we hoped it would be ok.

We decided to go there because it's reasonably close and he keeps saying he wants to go to Parc du Mont Tremblant. I've been there enough, I've been to all the areas, and lets be honest, Tremblant, Oka and Plaisance are where Montrealers go in large amounts. In fact there are people who only camp at the same place every single year.

Since I like variety and I don't like crowds I decided to retry Rouge-Matawin, despite my Lac Jamet experience. I think the problem there is that I took the 4, and then the 41 and got lost. If you take the 2, you get to the 6 and Lac Jamet easily. We did actually try to go there this time on Saturday, and we decided if we go to Rouge-Matawin again, we'd take the first spot on Lac Jamet.

So Thursday night we reserved spot 39 at Lac des sucreries. It's right at the La Macaza entrance, I figured we'd be able to make it there for 9pm.  Originally he wasn't supposed to work and I was finishing at 1:30. In the end he did work and I had to pack the truck alone and pick him up at 4.  We didn't leave Montreal till 6:30 and the Laurentian auto-route was a giant parking lot all the way past St Jerome.   We made it to the Wildlife reserve it was 8:50. 

Since I already hat a spot, she just had to make a paper for their holder and I was good. She said "Oh you're right in front here".  Now I figured she did not mean it LITERALLY.  I thought she meant that the Lac des sucreries campground is almost in front of the acceuil.  No, spot 39 is LITERALLY in front of the acceuil. ANd it's confusing, because you can go from 1 - 34 and 40 & 41 are all continuous in the campsite and 35-39 are in front of the acceuil, 39 is right near the canoe portage trail.

Well we went around for ONE HOUR looking for spot 39. Unlike parcs in Wildlife reserves they do not give you a map of the campground.  Thankfully a butch lady say us driving around in circles and stopped us on one of our loops and asked if we needed help. We told her our problem. She said, No problem, follow me, the lady camped over yonder knows all the spot, she'll tell you were it is..

So it was now 10pm and PITCH BLACK. The new tent requires 2 people to put up and light, so we used the car's headlights but without running the truck.  BIG MISTAKE.  At some point the truck didn't start anymore. We hadn't even filled up the mattress. Thank god I had brought the tent floor.  At least it wasn't too hard sleeping on that floor.

Thankfully the next morning, my truck started, so I took it for a 30 minute drive back to La Macaza to make sure battery was good. Then we filled the mattress..

We did end up canoeing a bit on le lac des sucreries after it stopped raining on Saturday.

On Sunday we packed and we were back in Montreal by 12;30. Mostly because I was too tired.  I didn't have the energy to canoe. I didn't have the energy to do much of anything. Just packing uppacking, putting up tent and tarps wore me down completely.




Critter count, Ruffed grouse, loons, chipmunk, squirrel, groundhog.

Le Lac Jamet, on n'y est jamais arrivé

Many things that could go wrong went wrong and we never made it to the lake we expected to camp at. Our experience in the reserve faunique Rouge-Matawin was so poor that we were back home by noon today.   

It was quite an adventure, I like offroading, and I've been to quite a few places this summer that were off the beaten path, but this was undoubtedly the worst kept trail ever. Between the fallen trees, and the unmarked rocks all over the place, and in some places ditches and ravines on a road barely wide enough for SUV, and the trails were not marked at all once we got on the 41. The place to get information closed at 4pm and would not re-open till 8am the next morning.

After hitting what my companion called a 'bear claw' in the road which may have damaged my vehicle and almost sent the canoe flying off the truck, breaking the brand new straps we got to put the canoe on the truck, we backtracked to a Y in the road and pretty much parked and camped there for the night because it was wide enough to accommodate a tent. By then it was pitch dark and I didn't want to end in a ravine. Oh did I mention there was torrential rain pouring the entire time we went looking for this lake and the last hour was almost in complete darkness.

The punster in me can't help noticing that this lake is called Lac Jamet - which is French and sounds like jamais, which is the French word for NEVER. So... we never made it to lake never!

 
Worse camping week-end ever. Never canoed. Took us over an hour to put up tarp in rain and I couldn't sleep because we were camping on the trail and I was afraid some drunk idiot would come barrelling out of nowhere and kill us. What the irrational mind thinks after being stressed out.... We didn't see a soul the entire time we were on the off road trail. Well except for 3 cotton tail deer, 3 regular deer, a partridge, a loon, a raven family and several chipmunks.