Adventurion

The wild camping in Mastigouche Wildlife Reserve is a true nature experience, which you can get close to Montreal.

Video

Where is it

Mastigouche Wildlife Reserve is located  200 km north from Montreal, about 3 hours driving. The park has many entrances so make sure where is the one you need and follow GPS 🙂
We stopped at the Catherine registration center, paid for the entrance, bought a package of wood, and continued on Chemin du Parc Mastigouche to our camping site near the lac aux Sables.

Description

There is a small parking place from which a tiny trail starts to your site. A dry toilet is near the parking place. No water, no cellphones, and truth be told, no good roads too. In a nutshell, the perfect place to escape from your routine to the natural preserve 😆

As we arrived, the first thing we heard from our neighbors after greeting was: 
– It’s a beautiful place, but mosquitoes here are very mad and very angry, – they said, scratching their arms. They arrived a night before and for us hearing that wasn’t very reassuring. But as we realized later, mosquitoes weren’t the main bloodsuckers.  Black flies and horse flies were the ones our insect repellents couldn’t help with. Adults got a few bites but most got our boys 😟

The campsite

According to the weather forecast, the rain supposed to start the night we arrived. So set up the tent was our task number one. After it’s done, task number two was a kitchen tent. Usually, we put it around the table and hide all our kitchen stuff inside. And task number three, not mandatory though, to stretch a hammock.

After all that was done, we went to the small beach for shore fishing. This was our main objective when choosing the wild camping in Mastigouche. Unfortunately, we had no luck. And later we learned that fishing is not allowed on the Lac aux Sables. It was an unpleasant surprise because we didn’t find this information on the park’s website and even in the Catherine registration center they wished us good luck with fishing.

The next day we came back to this center determined to clarify where are the places we can fish. But the first question we have been asked was:
– What kind of vehicle do you have? 🧐
He-he, in other words: “If you don’t have 4×4, don’t go there fishing”. And we didn’t. On the same day, two guys were evacuated from the burned car somewhere in the wild of the reserve.

The lake

The beach is at the end of the trail hidden by trees and bushes.

Kids played a lot in the water. Also, they found a spooky-looking spider and ran to us, screaming “tarantula”. Yeah, it really looked a bit like a tarantula but as we learned later and if not mistaken, it is a harmless fishing spider.

A night brought refreshing air and we gathered around a campfire. For the dinner, we had juicy steaks, baked garlic scapes, almost cooked potatoes, and of course marshmallows for dessert. And the beautiful moon on a starry night sky is always something all campers looking up in the evenings 🌙

You know, what is the most important thing in coffee? Right, it is where and who you can drink it with. The morning coffee, served directly to your tent by your loved one just makes all things completely perfect.

Take away points

• Bring your soap and toilet paper.
• Don’t forget insect repellent (do research about one for black flies).
• Have “after bite” relief pen or gel.
• Bring sunscreen cream.
• Use the water barrels to refill near the visitor’s center as there is no potable water on the campsite.