Mont Orford Camping Labor Day 2020

Saturday night camping at Camping Magog Orford, large private campground close to the park.

I was really impressed with the tent camping sites, where we pitched our tent, tucked into the woods.

We spent all our camp hours at our friend's site. They had the trailer and all the amenities.

After our hike today I took advantage of the pools and soaked my tired body in the outdoor hot tub.

Nice campground, would recommend. Serviced sites are close together and not very treed, but the tent sites are lovely. It served our needs well.

Two arms of Lac Simoneau to the far right and middle, and I think that's Lac Bowker on the far left.

Although we had intended to do a different hike where we ended up instead turned out to be a very beautiful hike with way less people than we would have encountered at Mont Orford.

Plus it was free, which maybe it's not supposed to be, but there was no pay station or signage saying otherwise where we accessed the trail.

Would definitely recommend this hike.

Remember: you can always check the little map feature with this post to see exactly where this photo was taken.

Doing the loop around the summit of Mont des Trois Lacs.

Here we get a view of Mont Orford, where we had hoped to hike. From our sunny perch we watching rain clouds threaten Mont Orford and we were grateful for our location.

We found the main trail, designated by the red /white blaze named Brompton Principal, I think.

We're packing up here after our lunch break.

The big plan for the weekend was to take our friend Natalie on her first hike. Our plan was to go to Mont Orford National Park. Well, it's a long weekend and a pandemic and we didn't realize the only way we'd get into the park is by pre-purchasing access online.

So... we needed to find a new hiking trail. Gaia Maps (an app we use) to the rescue. TBH, I'm new to Gaia maps but Damien has been fooling around with it for a while. I do a lot of google searches, I love my paper maps and collecting pamphlets at tourist places (but those are closed during the pandemic...)

Gaia maps showed us quite a few trails in the area, part of the Les Sentiers de l'Estrie (Eastern Township Trails).

The backbone of Les Sentiers de l'Estrie is a linear trail of 156 km that crosses a large part of the Eastern Townships from south to north. It begins on the Quebec - USA border, near Sutton, and ends in the valley of the Saint-François River. It passes through the summits of Monts Sutton, Echo, Singer, Glen, Gauvin, Foster, Chagnon, Orford, Chauve, Trois-Lacs and Cathédrale (Carré).

It's a trail system I don't have a good handle on because the site is entirely in French. And it would appear you need to pay to access the trails, but where to pay is not clear.

Anyway, not sure exactly what to expect, a part of the adventure I'm not entirely comfortable with when taking other people, we drove off from the Mont Orford National Park and found access to the trail system off of Chemin du Lac Brompton.

We parked along the ditch and started walking in along ATV trails, using Gaia as our guide.

Here are the kids with the shoulder of Mont des Trois Lacs in the background.

The weekend feels hopeful when this is the sky as you're driving out of the city.