Airplane excursion
A broken Mexican terra-cotta tile. That's what it looks like! Or maybe like a strange, colourless kaleidoscope. Floating diamonds, triangles and trapezoids. We're flying over the Saguenay, just a few days before spring. The broken pieces of ice on the river contribute to the surrealist scenery, as if the frozen river had just been pummelled by a giant sledgehammer, creating dozens of sheets of ice, which slowly drift down with the current, heading for the St. Lawrence.
The ferries that link the two banks are the only vessels capable of momentarily breaking the unending procession of shattered ice. All the team members are looking down, hypnotized by the scenery flying by, all except Yanick Rose and Denis Bouchard, who are frenetically pressing various buttons, capturing this ice ballet for posterity.
We can't get enough of the show the ice floes put on. Stuck together like the pieces of a puzzle, they seemingly race to see which will get to the St. Lawrence first. Between the pieces of this gigantic puzzle, one can see the glacial, dark blue waters, which only make the ice seem even brighter.
It doesn't take too much time before we spot the cause of the phenomenon. An icebreaker, microscopic when seen from the plane, is shattering the sheet of ice - which looks gigantic compared with the boat - still covering the Saguenay River. The boat goes back and forth between the riverbanks. It seems like this task could take years to accomplish if you consider the enormous size difference between the little boat and the ice floe it's tackling.
The plane turns toward the northern bank of the Saguenay. The pilot informs us that we are going to fly over Mt Valinouet and the Monts Valin chain. The 12-seater plane hangs low and brushes against a few mountain peaks. It looks like we are flying over yet another paradise for off-trail cross-country skiing, judging from the many ski tracks we spy below. There are now villages to disturb the heavenly peace of the virgin forest, only route 172, which links Tadoussac and Chicoutimi, runs across.
Once again, the team members are left speechless by this snowy no man's land. All except Benoît Laporte, our VIA representative, who is looking at his shoes as he mumbles some inaudible curses against this too-low flight. Once he's back firmly on the ground, he will confess to us that he's "a train man. I just can't help it!"
CEPAL Aventure offers 20-minute plane rides through the Saguenay and Lac St-Jean region, taking off either from Saint-Félicien or Jonquière. Longer expeditions to the far north or Labrador are also available. This way you can plan a snowmobile expedition through the far north and get to your starting point by air. CEPAL owns three Otter planes, three Beavers and two Cesnas. In the dead of winter, it is particularly magical to land on a frozen lake, thanks to the skis that take the place of the traditional wheels on the plane.
When I get back to solid ground, I feel lucky to have been able to see such a breathtaking natural spectacle. Once again, words fail to describe the exhilaration and the shivers that ran through us when we looked down on the pulverized ice of the Saguenay. We looked upon a masterpiece created by some unknown hand, a masterpiece that impressed us only because it was the first time we were seeing it from 2,000 feet up.
