The best ski town you’ve never heard of.

Reading Time: 7 minutes

Why two B.C. ski bums travelLED 5,000 kilometres to go cat-skiing in Murdochville, Quebec.

“What are you doing here?” It’s a question asked in curious confusion. We hear it over and over, and are asking it ourselves. Why did we, two guys from B.C. mountain towns, fly a red-eye across the country and drive seven hours to go ski-touring and cat-skiing in middle-of-nowhere Quebec?

Staring down an alley of spruce trees that’s overflowing with fluffy, untracked snow, some of that self-doubt and judgement floats off with the ice crystals glittering in the sky. More evaporates when photographer Ryan Creary drops in to set up for a photo and immediately disappears in a cloud of smoke, featherweight flakes flowing over his head.

“Oh, oh, oh, oh,” chuckles Simon, our guide, as he throws me a snow-eating grin. 

The last of the doubt disappears when it’s my turn to ski. I pole off, plane across the slope, push my feet into a turn and begin to submarine. Shins, knees, thighs, hips, chest, then a shower of icy crystals sprays my face. Newton’s third law and my creaky quads kick in and I explode upward, breaching the surface. In the brief moment of weightlessness I feel the -10°C air suck against my teeth and then my lips instinctively close in anticipation of the faceshot to come. 

It continues this way for the rest of the run. Snow in the face, cold in the face, over and over down the perfect fall line run. In the meadow at the bottom I slide up to my two companions, all of us snow-caked and smiling, and look back at our turns.

“That was the best run of my season,” says Simon.

“That was worth coming from Revelstoke,” Creary adds with a laugh.

I agree with them both. And it’s only our first day at Chic-Chac.

PRODIGAL SON

Guillaume Molaison is the visionary leading Chic-Chac, an outdoor adventure company not to be confused with Chic-Choc, the name of a nearby mountain range and backcountry lodge. Molaison grew up near Percé, the town with the famous rock at the eastern point of Quebec’s Gaspé Peninsula. It’s eight hours northeast of the closest major airport at Quebec City. Between the rugged coast and the inland wilderness, it was paradise for an outdoorsy kid. He played in the forest, fished in the rivers and learned to ski at Mont Miller, the ski hill rising above the mining town of Murdochville, an hour inland. When the cod fishery closed, his dad lost his livelihood and the family moved to Montreal. But the Gaspé remained his home. 

“In Montreal the perception is that everyone is poor in the Gaspé,” he says. “It hurt, but it was motivation for me to come back and prove we are hard workers and rich from the land.”

In 1999 the copper mine in Murdochville shut for good. The population, which once numbered 5,000, dwindled to a few hundred residents. It was a ghost town. But Molaison remembered its two-storey houses with snow up to the eves, the fun terrain at Mont Miller, the open mountain faces around the mine site and the Chic-Choc Mountains, arguably the best ski-touring destination in eastern North America, just an hour to the west. In the early 2000s he returned to Murdochville for a short visit with his girlfriend and his touring gear. The skiing was good and they were sad to leave. The next year they rented a house for $25 a month. The year after that they bought a duplex for $6,000. He started his own guiding company, leading ski-touring trips and rafting in the summer. Chic-Chac was born. “I knew Murdochville could be something very special on the East Coast,” Molaison says. 

By the time Creary and I pull into Murdochville on a snowy evening last March, Molaison’s vision had propelled the town into an outdoor mecca. Chic-Chac runs snowcat skiing on two mountains and operates the Mont Miller ski hill. It also offers backcountry ski guiding and, occasionally, heli-skiing. A renovated church serves as a base of operations, restaurant, store, and (almost sacrilegiously) a party spot. Molaison also owns a hostel, a motel and several rental houses in town, which are booked every weekend from January to April. When the snow melts there’s a campground, bike trails, hiking and rafting. 

EASTERN TOUR

We settle into the hostel and then carbo-load for the next day on excellent Quebecois food—tartare, poutine, burgers—and local beer. In the morning Simon drives us an hour through the mountains to the base of Mont Lyall. There’s 10cm of snow in the parking lot and it seems to grow deeper with every stride as we skin along a marked uptrack. By the time we’re zig-zagging the upper slopes, our guide Simon is thigh deep while breaking trail.

The Fédération Québécoise de Montagne et de l’Escalade, the Quebec equivalent of the Alpine Club of Canada, worked with local groups to cut runs and skin tracks out of the thick forest on Lyall, enabling great backcountry skiing where otherwise it would be a bushwhack.

Our first, faceshot-filled run is one of Simon’s favourite lines: a cut through the trees that tosses us over a couple of 40-degree rolls. At the bottom, after dusting the snow off our tuques and goggles, we scamper back up for two more. 

As the day progresses the clouds part, exposing the nearby mountains. Bent like old men, round and bald on top, they’ve obviously been through a few ice ages. But screaming from my legs suggest they are deceptively tall. Several of the peaks top out over 1,000m. Our last run drops more than 500m from near the ridge crest right back to the car. It’s longer than a lot of backcountry runs in B.C.

The next day we sample the cat-skiing. We climb aboard the machine behind Chic-Chac’s church, joining a mixed group from New Hampshire, Quebec, Ontario and Nova Scotia. The guide tells us we’re the first guests they’ve had from B.C. as the cat lurches across the highway and heads off into the forest.

Chic-Chac’s cat-skiing takes place on two separate mountains: Mont York and Mont Porphyre, with a third currently in development. Our first stop is Mont York, a 40-minute cat ride eastward from town. The cat grinds up an impossibly steep road to a long ridge, and runs drop like ribbons ranging in length from 200 metres of vertical to nearly 400. It’s fun skiing—open, rolling and featured with wind lips, scoops and small cliffs. Lower down there are wooden jumps to fly off. There’s less fresh snow here than on Lyall, but no one’s complaining about the boot-top fluff. We don’t cross our tracks, or anyone else’s, all day. The runs are blacks and blues, with the optional tighter line or steeper pitch. Watching our group working its way down I think this might be the perfect place to try cat-skiing for the first time. From strong intermediates to ripping experts, everyone’s finding their own adventure. 

WINDS OF CHANGE

Back in Murdochville we head inside for après while the cat clacks across to the gas station to fill up, prepping for our skiing on Mont Porphyre the following day. After nachos and beer, I take a walk around Murdochville, a company town that’s a mix of identical duplexes, two-storey houses and long, low apartment buildings. Despite its many empty storefronts, Murdochville feels as if it’s on the edge of gentrification—boarded-up buildings sit next to homes with fresh coats of paint. One of our fellow cat-skiers told us skiers from as far away as Montreal are snapping up houses in town, driving prices up—they’re now 10 times what they were a decade ago.

After five minutes of walking I come to the end of town: a giant snow drift burying the fence around the mine, which looks like a giant took a bite out of the side of a mountain. Turning around, I see the orderly streets leading to Mont Miller. Only open on weekends, we don’t get a chance to ski its 32 runs. Above its one T-bar, a line of wind turbines spike the ridgetop taking advantage of the area’s consistent—and considerable—winds. 

It’s true, wind is nearly constant in Murdochville. It bites exposed skin, builds long drifts of snow and polishes ridge tops to a rock-hard patina. But it also redistributes the white stuff. When we arrive at the top of Mont Porphyre the following day, it’s obvious another group has skied its runs since the snowfall two days ago. But four or five turns from the top, the tracks disappear and the snow is soft. Compared to Mont York, Porphyre’s runs are open, giving it a high-alpine feel. Then again, the vertical is shorter. We crush six laps before lunch. 

Late in the afternoon the cat drops us at a high point. While unloading, the wind blows so hard my skis almost fly away. I pin them down and take in the surreal view: the mine, the town, the wind turbines, the stunted trees, the vibrant forest, the snow-covered hills and the blue haze in the distance—the Atlantic. The scene is both beautiful and harsh, wild and developed, epic and denuded. 

This place is gritty, someone in our group has said—gritty in the “showing courage and resolve” kind of way, with a small taste of the “covered in dirt” definition. Getting here is gritty: long and winding roads that are challenging but also beautiful. Murdochville is gritty: scarred by industry but using its natural assets to define its own future. Our accommodation is gritty: rustic and simple but also comfortable. And the skiing is gritty: windy and cold but with the deepest and longest runs in eastern Canada. 

On our last run at Chic-Chac, arcing turns through the scraggly trees, I realize I am a gritty skier. I prefer Chic-Chac to hot tubs and soufflés. Yeah, it was totally worth leaving B.C.