Beaver Tails Nordic Ski Club

We had no less than 20 hikers turn out at Oka on this beautiful Thanksgiving weekend.  And we had much to be thankful for.  The weather was unseasonably warm and pleasant.   It was already 18 C as we gathered just before 10 am and was up to 22 C when we finished at around noon.  Plus, as has been a Thanksgiving tradition the last few years at Oka, there were free apples, chocolate and Oka cheese awaiting people at the summit.  So we had an objective! Most visitors to the park take the Sentier du Calvaire d’Oka.  That is the more direct route to the “three chapels” lookout, where the food was supposed to be.  But that would have been too easy for our hardy band of hikers, so we walked to the east end of the parking lot and set out on the Sentier du Sommet trail.  This trail is actually designated as a mountain bike trail, and we did have to occasionally call out “bikes up!” to warn of oncoming riders. The first 2 km of this trail has some steep ups and downs.  After a few of these, several in our group challenged my description of this hike in last week’s update message as “easy to moderate”.  I tried to explain that these hills constituted the “moderate” part!   We soon completed this “moderate” section and reached a lookout point.  There used to be a warming hut, but it has disappeared and has been replaced by a couple of picnic tables.  On the map that Oka park hands out, it labels this point as the official summit, as opposed to the three chapels lookout. But there are trees surrounding this vantage point and there is not much of a view to be had. We kept following the quiet trail towards the three chapels summit where the free food was to be found.  Unlike the past couple of years, we did not take any wrong turns and we soon joined up with the last bit of the Sentier du Calvaire.  A few minutes later we reached the three chapels lookout.  There was indeed food being handed out by park workers to all comers.  And there many comers — the lookout was quite crowded!  We lined up at the food table and were handed apples, Oka cheese, and chocolate covered cranberries. After about 20 minutes of enjoying the treats and the view, we started down on the Sentier du Calvaire.  This trail has seven mini-chapels along it, each of which contains a painted wooden bas relief carving depicting a religious scene.  Since this was the main trail there were many more people on it, compared to the longer trail we had taken to the summit.  Half an hour later we were back at the cars.  The whole hike had taken just over two hours and we covered 8.15 km.   What a great way to celebrate the Thanksgiving weekend!