Travel and Adventure by Various Travel Authors

By Steve Bergsman

In retrospect, I think my mistake was saying that I had done cross-country skiing in the past. It didn't seem to make any difference that I quickly followed up that remark with the explanation that the last time I did cross-country skiing was 10 years ago and that I referred to myself as a beginner. My guide, Guy Morin, had a plan for us. Nearly every day during the winter he cross-country skis about eight miles of local trails, and he was going to take me on one of those extensive journeys.

Guy was 63 years old, a retired postal worker who had legs like tree trunks. I figured someone who walked as much as he did in 33 years of delivering mail, come rain, snow or abysmally freezing weather, would have preferred the kind of retirement where he'd kick his feet up and watch curling every afternoon on the local television. Instead, he joined the ski patrol at Mont-Sainte-Anne, about 30 miles to the east of Quebec City and there he spends his winters traversing the mountain's snowy trails.

Mont-Sainte-Anne is said to be Eastern Canada's premier downhill ski location, but this winter I decided I wanted to try cross-country skiing again. I had been in the Mont-Sainte-Anne area the prior summer to do mountain biking, and my guide at the time explained that the trails we were using then were the ones also used in the winter for cross-country skiing.

When winter rolled around, I looked up the dates for Quebec City's famed winter carnival, Carnaval de Quebec, and booked my flights. After a day of festivities, I reserved space on the shuttle bus and early one morning headed to Mont-Sainte-Anne, where a driver picked me up and took me to the Mont-Sainte-Anne Cross-Country Ski Center.

The ski center boasts 132 miles of trails at the base of Mont Ferreol. An extensive reception center outfits and feeds skiers on those vast mountain trails. There are three heated cabins, or as Guy liked to say, refuges, in case things go badly on the trail or anyone wants to warm up and take a break in the action.

After 10 years, the first thing I noticed was that the equipment — boots, skis and poles — had gone high-tech. The boots were slim, aerodynamic and very sleek-looking. The skis, always much thinner than downhill, were now also much lighter. Guy helped me snap the boots into place and we were off. If there were any instructions on proper technique, I didn't receive them. Guy just assumed I would start gliding and intuitively remember what to do, which is exactly what happened.

With cross-country skis, only the toe is attached, so the heel lifts. The motion is a step-glide, step-glide. For beginners, the problem is that the skis are so light they tend to slip away on the stepping, especially where the trail is open. But all the trails at Mont-Sainte-Anne were rutted. Once I slipped my skis into the groomed ruts, I was always gliding in a straight line. Guy insisted I stay in the ruts for most of the course, and I was happy to oblige as it was very helpful in getting my step-glide more coordinated and for building confidence as we moved on.

In the morning, the sun was strong, there was no wind and the temperature edged out of the teens to a blustery 20 degrees.

The temperature would be my only problem of the day — not that it was too cold but that I was too hot. Coming from Arizona, I just assumed that I would suffer in the cold Quebec winter air, so for my day on the trails I overlayered, overmittened and generally overdressed.

Cross-country skiing is an aggressively aerobic exercise, and as with any such physical activity, the body heats up to accommodate the continued muscle movement. Despite the 20-degree weather, I began to sweat as if I were in a sauna. Even worse, I was exuding so much body heat into the cold that my glasses constantly fogged, especially after a tough stretch of climbing. At first I exchanged my everyday glasses for sports sunglasses, but I even fogged those. Off came the tuque from around my next neck and chin, off came the big mittens so I was just using liners, and I changed hats to one made from lighter material. When we eventually stopped for lunch, I took off a layer of clothes, as well.

After two straight hours of skiing, we came to a log cabin called Refuge de Ruisseau Rouge, which was at the highest elevation of this particular set of trails crisscrossing the foothills of Mont Ferreol. A propane heater in the cabin kept the temperature at about 40 degrees. While we were having lunch, however, I felt chilled and realized the two shirts closest to my skin were damp with sweat and that when it was time to ski again I would be cold. I stripped my upper body to my T-shirt and dried both it and my next shirt over the propane heater.

I was too busy trying to master the few techniques of cross-country skiing I would need on this day's journey to fully grasp Guy's big plan for me, which was to cover eight miles that day and see as much of the mountain as possible. I admit here something I wouldn't admit to Guy: By the afternoon I was getting tired. Whenever he would say, "Let's go past the Auberge du Fondeur," or "Let's see the Refuge Marie-Josee" or "Let's ski alongside the River Jean Karose," I would always say, "Sure, let's go."

It was either the macho or masochist in me, but I wasn't going to let on to Guy that he was crushing me on the trail. I hung on through the last intense climb before the final descent to the ski center, which I didn't really see too clearly because my glasses had fogged once more. I'd made the whole trip, although at the end (with apologies to Manfred Mann) I was blinded by the white.

WHEN YOU GO

Lodging: I stayed in Quebec City at the convenient, centrally located Hilton Quebec: www.hiltonquebec.com.

Carnaval de Quebec is one of the best winter carnivals on the globe: www.carnaval.qc.ca.

Skiing at Mont-Sainte-Anne: www.mont-sainte-anne.com.

Steve Bergsman is a freelance travel writer. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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