One more beautiful destination not far from Montreal is Mont Saint-Hilaire. We had been visiting this place a few times starting from the time our son was 3 y.o. And almost every year later on – with our friends and their kids or with our son’s friends and their parents 🙂
“The Gault Nature Reserve, owned by McGill University, is located at Mont-Saint-Hilaire and protects more than 1,000 hectares of natural forest.”(c) https://gault.mcgill.ca/en/
Mont Saint-Hilaire has 3 summits: The Dieppe, Rocky, Pain de Sucre and we had visited them all. The length of the trails is different but the views are awesome from each summit.
The bonus at the end of the trail is Lac Hertel which hosts a beautiful picnic and resting area.
In the attached video, we hike to the Dieppe summit. The one-way trail is only 3.8 km and the estimated time to reach the summit is approximately 1h 15min. The trail is not difficult but it is a good idea to take trekking poles with you. If the weather is good, give yourself about 1 hour to enjoy the sun, wind, and the views on the top.
From the summit, Mont-Saint-Hilaire town looks very neat and tidy. Also from the top, you can see Montreal with its Olympic stadium. With the binoculars, which we didn’t forget to bring with us this time, we were able to “spy” on the city 😉
Overall this place could be recommended for people of all ages, solo or family hiking 😍