McKinstry cabin

With a tropical weather system approaching (temps near 10C for most of next week) Bryan and I took the day off work to use the snow while it is still here. Our target was McKinstry cabin from P12 along Meech lake with a round trip distance of about 19k. We got great conditions with about 5cm of overnight snow and temps of about -5C. The trail from P12 gets right down to business and heads straight up steeply and doesn't really let up until you are at Ridge road some 2-3 kilometres away. From there it was a series of fun hills and some nice flats to get to McKinstry cabin. It took us about 2.5 hours to get there and that included many stops to take pictures.

The route back takes a lot less time as the trail is mostly downhill, especially from the junction with Ridge road and the trail from Meech Lake. This is often the case skiing in Gatineau Park: work hard to climb the hills on the way out and cruise back down hill on the return. We saw surpisingly quite a lot of other skiers this day, perhaps they saw the same weather forecasts that we did. I really enjoyed the day and would return to McKinstry for sure.