2024-07-07 - Trip Report Day 3 - Zec des Martres, Quebec

Zec des Martres

Woke up just before 6 to great morning colours, same view as one of my shots when I first arrived to camp in the rain yesterday, but with instead tinted with red.

This glorious Upis was hanging around by my pack as I went to get ready to make a morning expedition to Mont du Lac a L'Empech.

Only took a few minutes of climbing switchbacks to reach an open view of the cabin near where I had camped, and Lac a l'Ecluse behind it.

After stopping to lay down in the sun on the north summit, while it lasted, I continued climbing towards the middle peak, to be greeted by a sea of clouds in the valley ahead.

Reaching the small plateau of the middle peak leading into the main summit, expansive views of nearby peaks.

Along with an even broader sea of clouds in another valley.

The summit also rewards me with phone signal, for the first time since leaving the initial area of Mont du Dôme. I'm able to check the forecast, which promises 10mm of rain at 1pm and thunderstorms for the following 5 hours. It's currently 8:30am. My plan for the night is to camp at the great spot by the lake I passed yesterday, so I've only got a couple of km to go from today's campsite and then I can pre-emptively set up some shelter.

I arrive back at the lake by 10am.

Compared to yesterday, the lake is quite active with frogs, although I only see clamitans and septentrionalis. This clamitans surprised me with a well executed catch of a dragonyfly.

....and then continues to think about a second round.

Cool to find some more slime mold, amongst another miniature forest of Cladonia.

Pompilid that was walking amongst the lichen.

It doesn't seem like the rain or thunder that was forecasted earlier is coming in yet, despite being almost 2. So I decide to make the trip up to the summit just behind the lake, Butte aux Mouches, to see if I'm also able to get phone signal up there to check the forecast again and potentially video call with my family.

I approach it from the steeper and more rugged trail from the south face, and find that whilst the summit area overlooking the lake doesn't have signal, the summit area some 30m away looking at the peaks to the east has pretty good signal. After the call, it looks like an hour or so of rain is finally going to come in, so I descend to the north. I don't take any pics, as I decided I would climb back up after the rain with my stove to cook dinner and then try and get some pictures as the sun descends.

It rains for about 30-40 minutes, but relatively hard.