Snowy Trails, Cozy Inns: Skiing Town to Town in Quebec

Amid light snow, I skied out of the town of Ste.-Adèle, in the Laurentian Mountains of Quebec, and headed to Prévost, eight miles away. Only a few minutes earlier, I had walked out of Au Clos Rolland, a historic inn where I’d spent the previous night dining on a decadent three-course meal and resting up from a day of cross-country skiing.

Skiing from town to town through forests and meadows, then overnighting near the trail in relative luxury, was something I had never experienced in North America.

Au Clos Rolland is just a few blocks from the P’tit Train du Nord, a former railroad line turned multiuse trail that is groomed for cross-country skiing. My guide and I glided across it for a few minutes before veering off into the forest on the narrow, ungroomed Whizzard Trail. That’s where the real fun began.

For the past two days I had been following the east route of Les Routes Blanches, a new series of ski tours on the vast network of Nordic backcountry trails in the southern Laurentians, many created a century ago. There are three options. The 28-mile route I skied connects three small towns over three days, with two overnights near the trail, meals and luggage transport (about $700 per person, double occupancy); skiers can go with a guide, as I did, or try it on their own (about $42 for maps and parking; lodging and meals are extra). The north route, based at Mont Tremblant, includes two days of guided skiing on expert-level trails. On the more rugged 32-mile west route, skiers are currently responsible for booking a yurt and a backcountry cabin; next winter guided trips will be offered.

I have my own history in the area, too. I learned to downhill ski when I was 5 at a former resort called Gray Rocks. My German immigrant parents loved the area so much, they bought a lakeside cottage, which my mom sold when I was 13. I now live in Colorado, but the Laurentians still pull at my heart, a gentle tug that is impossible to ignore.

Pioneer trail builders

The Laurentians have been a ski destination since the early 20th century.

In the late 1920s, a Norwegian immigrant and avid skier, Herman Smith-Johannsen, known as Jackrabbit, moved to the town of Shawbridge, becoming a prolific designer of backcountry trails. He promoted the idea of a trail that would approximately parallel the existing train line and allow skiing between towns, and recruited volunteers to help clear it. The approximately 80-mile Maple Leaf Trail opened in 1933.

Sections of that trail still exist, as do other trails from the era. But awareness of them plummeted, especially after the Laurentian Autoroute was finished in 1959 and people began driving to the slopes instead of taking the train.

Now, Les Routes Blanches is changing that.

Through the woods and to a shower

The first day of my tour began on the P’tit Train du Nord trail, which quickly turned off onto an ungroomed trail, scribed with tracks from just a few skiers.

My guide, Will Hotopf, and I would follow paths like this all day. I had rented a Nordic touring setup in Val-David, where we’d started. Unlike the cross-country skis I use at home, these were slightly wider and had metal edges for better control and maneuverability.

We skied past thickets of alder bushes before gliding along rolling terrain through eastern white pine and red cedar. A detour led to a lean-to atop a knoll, where we gazed out at Mont Alta, a former alpine ski area now open to skiers willing to ascend by the power of their own quads to ski down.

Though the trail ran near Val-David’s outskirts, the town seemed far away. “You feel like you’re in the wilderness but you’re not at all,” Mr. Hotopf said.

The yin-yang of being in the backcountry yet close to creature comforts embodies the appeal of Les Routes Blanches. At times we were seemingly deep in the woods, all on our own; other times, we skied by houses and backyards, the scent of wood smoke tickling our noses. Occasionally we crossed roads. Yet we saw only a handful of other skiers.

After my trip, I spoke with Jean-François Girard, a guide based near Montreal who spearheaded the idea of Les Routes Blanches.

In 2009, he had discovered the meandering paths during day trips. “I was intrigued by these trails,” he told me. “And I got lost on them a couple of times.”

He started researching them and was soon inspired to revive the tradition of town-to-town skiing. Mr. Girard found a partner in SOPAIR, a nonprofit dedicated to trail conservation and development in the region, which now oversees Les Routes Blanches.

When I skied it, Les Routes Blanches, which just started up this winter, was still so new that Mr. Hotopf occasionally stopped to affix directional signs to trees. One well-marked intersection led to the Gillespie Trail, built by Gault Kerr Gillespie, another trail builder in the 1930s. In the early 1920s, Gillespie and his siblings would ski to school, and their route was along part of this trail.

Late in the afternoon, we skied across a frozen lake, passing spots where residents had cleared out small skating rinks by their docks. Sidestepping up a steep incline at the lake’s far end brought us to the Mustafa Trail and another detour to the top of a peak. A monochromatic landscape was spread out below us as the light faded.

Less than half an hour later, and a little more than nine miles from the day’s starting point, I clicked out of my skis at the Far Hills Resort Hotel on the outskirts of Val-Morin, where a hot shower awaited.

Time travel on skis

I awoke to four inches of new snow, which muffled everything in the forest as we set off to tackle the day’s 12.4-mile route. Lingering copper and faded gold beech leaves accented the dark green conifers. Occasionally snow would tumble off a cedar branch, like a soft exhalation. If this was forest bathing, it’d be a cold plunge.

Soon we hit the legacy Maple Leaf Trail, where I was transported to an earlier time, one in which I fell in love with skiing amid a landscape like this one and felt welcome within the Quebecois culture, where a woodsy conviviality prevails and my last name is pronounced without the “H.”

Even though I got cell service almost the whole time, I still felt unplugged for those few days, as if in a snow globe.

We traversed five lakes that day. Gliding across the snow-covered ice, I imagined living in one of the lovely lakeside houses that punctuated the shoreline. At Lac Lucerne, Mr. Hotopf mentioned Emile Cochand, a Swiss immigrant who established Canada’s first ski school, along with trails, near this spot in the late 1910s. On Lac Deauville, we picnicked on a floating dock encased in the ice.

Toward the end of a long, gently rolling descent, we stopped at a shelter in a clearing, warmed up by a wood-burning stove, then skied to the P’tit Train du Nord for the last 2.5 miles into town.

Skiing is life

At dinner that night at Au Clos Rolland, I learned more about the trails from James Jackson, the board president of SOPAIR; his wife, Rebecca MacDonald; and Chris Schlachter, a cross-country skier.

Mr. Jackson described the Routes Blanches project as “joining backyards” across the region. Some of the routes have been lost to development or to new property owners who no longer grant access to trails that cross their land. “What we’d like to get to is that landowners want the trail on their land,” Mr. Jackson said.

The final day’s route included an ascent of Sommet Olympia, a bump of a ski hill. We affixed climbing skins to our skis to go up the slope, then skied off the backside, still following the Whizzard Trail. Eventually, we arrived at another section of the P’tit Train du Nord, skiing a final mile or so, then ending steps from the Microbrasserie Shawbridge, where the chance to celebrate with beer brewed on site awaited.

But first, more skiing. The snow sparkled in the sun; barren trees formed a backdrop of dark lines going every which way. Johannsen, the rugged pioneer, may have considered me soft for the cushy ski experience I’d just had. And I wouldn’t dispute it. There’s something to be said for his stamina; he lived to be 111. I’ll gladly take a shorter life span, as long as I can ski until the end.