Billed as the longest loppet in Canada, the Boreal 100K loppet took place in Forestville Quebec for its third year. With the successes of the first few years, organizers were hoping for bigger and better things. Back in the field was two time champion Steve Cyr, one of the top loppet racers in Canada and three time Olympian.
Forestville is located on the North Shore of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, approximately 4 hours drive through the picturesque Charlevoix region from Quebec City. Forestville is easily reachable with direct flights from most North American and international destinations to Montreal with a quick connection to Quebec city or Baie Comeau. From either location, the final leg is by rental car. Once athletes get to Forestville, everything happens from the race headquarters, the Econolodge Danube Bleu. The hotel puts on a great buffet, a wax room is set up in the adjacent flower shop (the entire shop packs up for the weekend) and the start/finish line is no more than a 100m walk from any of the hotel rooms!
The traditional 100 km course traverses some of the most picturesque Canadian Shield terrain, meandering through river valleys, sharp hills, between granite peaks, and along hundreds of frozen lakes, surrounded by Boreal forest. The course offers some of the most stunning scenery east of Royal Gorge California. Best of all, held largely at sea level, the 100K offers the challenge of the distance, without the lung busting thin air of other mountain locations.
While races throughout the Eastern sea board were suffering from a distinct lack of snow this year, the opposite occurred in Forestville. The Birkie may have been shortened, the Lake Placid Loppet on thin minimal “washboard†coverage, and the Keski, taken off its traditional course including the famed Penguin Hill, to a 90% parkway course, Forestville, did not just have snow, but it had too much.
Situated up the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, the system that had dumped on communities from Lake Erie to Quebec City, picked up additional moisture as it hit the Gulf, and droped a foot and a half of new snow on the course the night before the race. The snowfall finally ended at 9 am at a rate of over an inch an hour. With the original race start planned for 7 am, the organizers, had already converted the course into a 3×27 km loop, noting that it would be impossible to get the 12 hour grooming job required to set the 100 km course completed.
Then the race start needed to be postponed till 10 am to allow the groomers to complete their work on the revised 27 km loop. However, there was so much snow that the groomers got stuck on the course. When the groomers finally arrived at the “finish line†they were cheered by racers and organizers alike. With the late start time, the course was now revised to only 54 km. Volunteers, who were out manning aid stations for several hours along with racers, were all glad to just “startâ€.
As the organizers said in French, “Maintenant, nous avon un course comme les autres…â€. Literally translated as, “Now we have a course like any other raceâ€. It was evident that the organizers, wanting to showcase their unique 100 km loop course were even more disappointed than the racers after a year of meticulous planning. Nevertheless, their efforts were heroic. It is a small miracle that the racers even got out on the trails and got to compete. It is a testament to the work of the volunteers and organizers in pulling together in the face of adversity.
So while there would be no 100 km event, and no visit to the most picturesque part of the traditional course, the racers got to race, money was still raised for the local high school teams that benefit from the proceeds of the event and sponsors still got the payback on their generous donations. And for athletes coming from as far west as Soda Springs California in the Sierras, there was still a race and the full experience to the small town French Canadian hospitality that makes this event so special. At Forestville, the entire town effectively shuts down for the event. It is the closest a citizen Nordic skier can get to rock star status in North America.
