Out Of This World Stargazing and Fall Colors While Hiking Cantons-de-l'Est, Québec
I recently returned from an absolutely epic 30-day film shoot in the beautiful province of Québec, Canada. I hiked, and backpacked, and mountain biked, and climbed, and ran, and star gazed, and ate, and paddled, and Via Ferrata ’ed my way through six diverse regions in Québec all showcasing mind-blowing fall colors. The Epic Trails episodes that will come out of this adventure will air next year, however I’m excited to share a glimpse into my time in “la belle province” by way of this blog.
As the fall colors started to crank up their vibrance during my month-long road trip through Québec, I made my way to Cantons-de-l’Est, also known as the Eastern Townships.
I started by meeting up with Dany Senay, a local forest ecologist and hiking guide. We hiked along one of the region's many scenic trails. This particular trail was still in development—as in, there is no trail yet! It led us through a densely forested tract and up to the peak of Mont Hereford.
Dany clearly has an intimate knowledge of this forest; knowledge that flows as readily as the numerous, constant creeks we hiked over on our adventure. This area is notable for have been set aside and protected from all logging and development in order to reduce the carbon footprint. Twenty years ago, vast swaths of the forest in the region were being clear cut. Today, Dany, along with others, are working to restore a healthy ecology through conversation and responsible forest management as an effort to fight global warming.
The success of their efforts can be seen at the summit of Mont Hereford, where you are rewarded with a bird’s eye view of the forested rolling hills. A beautiful sight to take in, especially at this time of the year.
Not to be out done—the fall colors I witnessed at the next stop on our trip, in Lac-Mégantic, were the best I have ever seen!
Near Lac-Mégantic is Parc du Mont Mégantic and Mont Mégantic itself; home of the world’s first International Dark Sky Reserve. I live in Flagstaff, Arizona, another Dark Sky Reserve and home of the Lowell Observatory (where the very-much-a-planet Pluto was discovered), so I felt a special kinship to Mégantic.
At the summit of Mont Mégantic are severallarge observatories, one of which is a working observatory full of scientistsgazing at the skies. I didn’t have access to that one (no PHD unfortunately). Idid, however, get to the chance to check out an alternate observatory that’s nolonger used by ‘actual’ scientists but that still has a damn strong telescope Icould peep through! Here I really got to tap into my inner nerd (which isreally just me all the time) and totally geek out over our galaxy.
My favorite part of this experience was getting to look extremely close at the moon. I examined crater after crater, mountains and valleys, and even peered at the shadows being cast across the lunar landscape.
The visible details of the moon were out-of-this-world mind blowing.
