In Quebec, a Winter Celebration on Skis

Written By Unknown on Minggu, 27 Januari 2013 | 17.35

Christinne Muschi for The New York Times

Scenes from Crossing of the Gaspé Peninsula.

Snow squeaked under my boots as I turned up the Rue Ste.-Anne and into the tangerine glow flowing from the streetlamps overhead. The storm that had blown in that afternoon had eased up for the moment, and in the distance I could just make out the sandstone spires of the  St.-Michel church still shrouded in fog.

Though Percé — a small coastal community on the far eastern tip of the Gaspé Peninsula in Quebec — has a handful of lovely cafes and taverns overlooking the Gulf of St. Lawrence, few places are large enough to hold hundreds of people at once. The church could.

So on that night last February I opened its big, white doors, and eased into the warmth of the narthex. I gasped at what lay before me. Some 350 cross-country skiers with rubicund faces from three days of playing outside were packed in the nave that caterers had transformed into a magnificent dining hall. Pews ran perpendicular to the altar, and bread and wine sat on dozens of long wooden tables. Yak sausages and sauerkraut steamed in chafing dishes beneath the gaze of saints who peered down from white walls. A jazz band waited in the pulpit, but for now the air rang with the mournful notes of  "Sposa son disprezzata"  from a lone soprano in the loft.

This had to be the coolest ski week on earth.

For the past decade, hundreds of cross-country skiers — nearly all of them from Quebec — have descended once a year on rural communities like Percé as part of a six-day, 100-mile-plus ski odyssey through the eastern pleats of Canada's largest province. The Crossing of the Gaspé Peninsula, or the Traversée de la Gaspésie, as it is known in French, is hardly a race. Rather, it is a roaming celebration of winter. And while the exact route changes every year, the idea is always the same: to come together, have fun and ski.

"It's always fantastic," said Chantal Hivon, a retired treasury employee from Montreal, who was on her fourth crossing since 2006. "It's a demanding week, but also recharging. The places you get to go are just incredible."

Sandwiched between the St. Lawrence River and Chaleur Bay, the Gaspé holds some of Quebec's most impressive peaks. The Chic-Chocs soar up to around 4,000 feet and collect more than 20 feet of snowfall a year. Caribou and moose roam the region, which has just 100,000 people spread over an area about the size of one and a half Connecticuts.

The first event in 2003 was a true traverse, which meant 50-mile days with little pampering. "The lucky ones got to sleep under a table," said Sharon Braverman, a simultaneous translator from Montreal who was on that first trip. "You were so exhausted you didn't care."

These days the T.D.L.G. offers a softer experience. Instead of traveling point-to-point on skis, participants spend a few days at a time in one spot — a lodge, inn or a local's home — and slip out along trails that volunteers groom just for the event. Come evening, skiers return by bus to the same base for communal meals at any place big enough to hold them all. The group then travels by bus to the next town to explore anew.

As an avid skier in all its forms, I had learned of the crossing while researching ways to combine my twin passions for snow and all things French. The event sounded like one of those cross-state bicycle rides but on skis. Bands play along the trails. Movie stars cook and entertain. There would be lectures by provincial celebrities like the astronaut Julie Payette and the pilot Robert Piché, a reformed drug smuggler who once saved 306 lives aboard a malfunctioning Airbus. At the end of each day's ski I could expect a trailside party complete with an accordion player and shots of Caribou, a French Canadian cocktail of wine and booze softened with warm maple syrup.

TIM NEVILLE, who lives in Oregon, writes frequently about the outdoors.


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