8 ms·

Trans-Taiga Road (2004)

ghssds 1y ago
I'm itching all over from all the insect bites only reading that website.
jdkee 1y ago
Via Wikipedia: The average consumption of residential and agricultural customers is relatively high, at 16,857 kWh per year in 2011,[119] because of the widespread use of electricity as the main source of space (77%) and water heating (90%).[124] Hydro-Québec estimates that heating accounts for more than one half of the electricity demand in the residential sector.[125]
- retrac 1y ago
  Around 10% of the electricity in New York and Boston comes from the James Bay Project; the power is transferred over 1000 miles.
newyankee 1y ago
Its funny when I saw this road, I realised the distance is probably more than the N-S or E-W distance of Bangladesh , a country with > 171 million people last checked. In fact barely equal to the diagonal length of the country. How much ever one talks about fertile plains, tropical weather being able to support more people, this no is still bonkers to me
- retrac 1y ago
  The low population density of central Canada is not because it's not fertile. A few hundred kilometres south of the area in the article, is a vast clay belt of about half a million square kilometres. It's fertile. You can grow potatoes and oats and the usual garden vegetables up there. Somewhat settled on the Quebec side, and there are farms, but less than 5% of the area suitable for agriculture, is currently used for agriculture. It's a region about the size of France, and there are no large cities, and the total population is about 100,000. You can even see the Quebec/Ontario border from space in some spots, because the Ontario side is wholly undeveloped: https://www.google.com/maps/@48.7805302,-79.5591059,52996m/ https://www.google.com/maps/@48.7805302,-79.5591059,52996m/
  - bix6 1y ago
    Does it matter if it’s fertile though? Isn’t the climate there the limiting factor on ag?
    - rfrey 1y ago
      The short growing season is somewhat offset by the very long summer days.
    - cyberax 1y ago
      You can grow plenty of food there: wheat, potatoes, apples, cabbage, etc. It's roughly at the same latitude as Moscow.
      - orthoxerox 1y ago
        Yes, and no one sane invests into agriculture around Moscow when there's much more warmer and fertile land down south. Factory farms and greenhouses? Yes, certainly, but this is driven by the food demands of a massive metropolis next door: move east or west far enough to offset this benefit and you will see scenes of rural decay.
        decimalenough 1y ago
        That's because small-scale farming is not sufficient profitable, not because it's not possible. You can find scenes of rural decay in most any industrialized country.
        cyberax 1y ago
        Plenty of people invest in agriculture around Moscow. That's why Russia is one of the leaders in food exports. To be fair, the bulk of the most productive Russian agricultural lands actually ends around Moscow's latitude.
    - antupis 1y ago
      It depends, like here in Finland, there is lots of farmland and active farms, but most is at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humid_continental_climate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humid_continental_climate , Norway also has a lot of farms in subarctic areas like this in the article, but Norway is substituting farming very heavily even European standards.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- noduerme 1y ago
  That's not specific to this road. You could probably pick any 50,000 sq km area on the planet besides Bangladesh, and the population density would be several orders of magnitude lower than that of Bangladesh, except for maybe the few largest metropolitan areas in the world. Bangladesh can't support half its population, and Canada could probably support 10x its population, so one has to conclude that the wild difference in fertility rate is not as simple to explain as a function of how much land there is or how much food can be produced there.
- LAC-Tech 1y ago
  Its funny when I saw this road, I realised the distance is probably more than the N-S or E-W distance of Bangladesh , a country with > 171 million people last checked. I feel like you've just given the Canadian Government some ideas
shmerl 1y ago
Photo tour: https://www.jamesbayroad.com/ttr/virtualtour/index.html https://www.jamesbayroad.com/ttr/virtualtour/index.html
jedberg 1y ago
Intersting! I know that in the contiguous USA, you will never be more than 20 miles from a road no matter where you are, but have no idea how far one can drive from a town.
- mgerdts 1y ago
  This story is about a road in Canada. I doubt the 20 mile thing holds in remote parts of Alaska.
  - jedberg 1y ago
    Updated my comment because you're right, I meant contiguous USA. And I'm aware it's about Canada, which is why I said "I wonder what the answer to this same question is for the USA". :)
    - bonzini 1y ago
      You probably want contiguous rather than continental. Continental does include Alaska but not Hawaii or US territories.
      - jedberg 1y ago
        You're right, and I edited my comment accordingly, but I asked Google and got this interesting AI response, so I guess a lot of people on the internet make the same mistake, since AI just echos its training data: The term "Continental United States" (CONUS) generally refers to the 48 contiguous states plus the District of Columbia, excluding Alaska and Hawaii. It encompasses the landmass of the United States located on the North American continent. While sometimes confused with the "contiguous United States," which also refers to the 48 states, "continental" specifically emphasizes the geographical location on the continent.
        eCa 1y ago
        You would have been better off asking Wikipedia: https://simple.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_United_States https://simple.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_United_State...
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
linehedonist 1y ago
Note that all this information is 20 years old and is badly outdated. Many of the facilities mentioned (eg the Nouchimi Outfitters gas station) no longer exist. https://www.facebook.com/TabascoADV/photos/a.696618650541057/1134749456727972/?type=3 https://www.facebook.com/TabascoADV/photos/a.696618650541057...
- BeFlatXIII 1y ago
  The most recent update on the homepage is from 2009-03-03.
- williamdclt 1y ago
  I'm fascinated by these. Who are the people operating these places? Where do they live, what's their lifestyle? Who are the customers, what are their stories?
  - _verandaguy 1y ago
    I don't have a definitive answer, but there's probably demand for these outside of adventure tourists trying to get to some of the most remote road-connected points in the world. The James Bay Road exists essentially as a service road for a bunch of hydroelectric infrastructure that's part of Quebec's James Bay Project. I've never gotten past planning a trip up, but I gather much of the traffic on these roads are transport trucks delivering supplies to these remote locations (beyond what can normally be shipped up there by Hydro Quebec's aviation fleet, which as I understand is mostly wet-leased from Air Inuit and can land on many of the unimproved strips near the major project sites). Anyway, little outposts like these might've been maintained by either Hydro Quebec on an emergency basis for these transports, or by volunteer (sort-of) trail associations, or by the province itself, or a combination of the three.
    - xattt 1y ago
      Similarly, the Sultan Industrial Road is a private logging road that saves a few hours of driving on the Trans-Canada between Wawa and Sudbury. However, amenities, and the likelihood of getting timely help, is low. Take your pick.
Nursie 1y ago
I'm a fan of the Gibb River Road in northern Western Australia, it's around as long, has some beautiful gorges along the way for a little swimming, there's a river crossing at the Pentecost. There are a few campsites along the way, and there is fuel at around the halfway point, and a town at each end, so it's not quite as far from civilisation as the Trans-taiga, plus you don't have to drive back the same way to get out! It's also significantly warmer, so much so that you want serious sunscreen and bugspray. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibb_River_Road https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibb_River_Road
petesergeant 1y ago
I find browsing around the map in remote Canada pretty interesting, especially the number of named settlements for which there appear to be absolutely no information or satellite evidence they exist. Take Roggan River: there’s a Wikipedia page claiming it’s a small village, and it’s on Google Maps, but there’s nothing identifiably there, and there’s no further information I can find online. The map is littered with these.
- defrost 1y ago
  Only a few of the villages on and about the Amistustikwach will have visible road access and cleared land plots. Many will blend in with the landscape and have river access. The google map pins are pretty approximate.
  - petesergeant 1y ago
    Can you point to one matching this description on the map?
    - defrost 1y ago
      If I took the time to find one, very likely .. it was literally a daily task back in the day when I worked Canadian resource postings for the company that ran [1] before being picked up by Standard and Poor. [1] https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/campaigns/metals-mining https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/campaigns/met...
- gdbsjjdn 1y ago
  From personal experience, there's over a dozen fly-in communities in the Northwest Territories. No roads, the only way to reach them is snowmobiling in the winter or taking a plane from Yellowknife. My understanding is that Northern Quebec and Ontario are similar, lots of very small indigenous communities that still follow pre-colonial practices. They would get supplies by plane or by boat. It's not surprising a settlement with 50 people is hard to find on satellite.
imaginator 1y ago
It looks like the road was constructed to serve the four hydro facilities that generate power for Montreal. https://openinframap.org/#7.12/53.8/-74.103/A,B,E,I,L,O,P,T https://openinframap.org/#7.12/53.8/-74.103/A,B,E,I,L,O,P,T show's the hydro facilities and power lines weaving their way down to Montreal.
- hkleppe 1y ago
  Relatively long distances of road and power transmission lines to reach the two most remote locations. Especially considering they seem to be limited in capacity (only 319 and 469MW). Curious to know if something bigger was in the plans, or perhaps the road also have/had other uses?
  - volkl48 1y ago
    The piece of the puzzle that you're missing is the dams at the far end of the road divert the Caniapiscau River into the La Grande River, which provides close to half the water that eventually feeds all of the generating stations downstream. Additionally, the reservoirs formed are important for making the system provide reliable power to match demand - demand for power in Quebec peaks in the coldest parts of winter, and the natural peak of runoff/river flow....is not then. So, the generation out there is useful but is not the primary reason why the road was built all the way out to there. -------- No special insight on the difficulty/expense of constructing the transmission, but ~788MW of extremely cheap power forever for constructing/maintaining ~130mi of extra transmission doesn't seem completely improbable to work out financially, especially at the time. I'll also note: - Vegetation maintenance costs are probably low given how slow things grow out there. - This was constructed long before the modern era of cheap(er) renewables. - Even today, Quebec's location, weather, and time of year of peak demand make the calculation for solar's cost-effectiveness a lot harder.
rob74 1y ago
> Along this road is also the farthest north point you can travel on a road in eastern Canada. Not to belittle the remoteness of this road, but I just find it interesting that the farthest north point you can travel on a road in eastern Canada is further south than most of Sweden (not to mention Norway or Iceland, which also have very extensive road networks). Another reminder of how important the Gulf Stream is for the climate of Europe...
- nkrisc 1y ago
  There’s that and of course the sheer lack of people who live in that vast wilderness larger than Sweden.
  - southernplaces7 1y ago
    >There’s that and of course the sheer lack of people who live in that vast wilderness larger than Sweden. If you're referring to just Northern Quebec, then sure, the area is maybe a bit larger than Sweden, but if you're referring to northern canada, meaning all of its territories above the provinces, then that's a whole different thing. You could fit much off central and western Europe into that region with room to spare.
  - deadbabe 1y ago
    With climate change this will change in the coming decades perhaps. Kind of exciting, a whole new landmass that few people have ever considered exploring and know very little about.
- nucleardog 1y ago
  Might be less surprising once you hear what Canadians mean when they say "Eastern Canada". Canada's divided almost exactly in half with the top half (48% of the land area) being the territories (Yukon, Northwest Territory, Nunavut; collectively "Northern Canada") and the bottom half being the provinces. When people say "Eastern Canada", they're referring to the Eastern provinces (Ontario, Quebec, the maritimes), and have already excluded the entire Northern half of the country. The nothernmost point of Eastern Canada is barely further north than the southern tip of Finland. However if you look at Northern Canada, there's stuff like Alert, NU with roads and an air strip which is the northernmost continuously inhabited place in the world. It sits more than 1200km further north than the northernmost tip of Scandinavia. My favourite Canadian geography fact: Canada shares borders with three countries. Two of those are land borders.
smikhanov 1y ago
no settlements or towns aside from Hydro Quebec's settlements for workers (these are private and are not open to the public - they will kick you out) Will they really kick a passing driver out when it's freezing outside? Heck, wherever the population is this sparse and conditions are this harsh people normally actively invite you to their places. This sounds so weird.
- mousethatroared 1y ago
  It's a way to get cheap tourists from invading?
  - rob74 1y ago
    Well, I mean, the touristic potential of a gravel road with 666 km of taiga scenery is a bit limited (if you have seen the first 20 km, you can probably imagine the remaining 646 pretty well). And I say this as someone who has been to Iceland recently...
    - mousethatroared 1y ago
      But when there's only four houses every hundred km, a dozen dumb tourists become a very big nuisance.
- nsavage 1y ago
  As bad as it sounds, I'm guessing this policy is because of the indigenous peoples who live in the area and not wanting to create a pattern.
- mastazi 1y ago
  > people normally actively invite you to their places. I've recently watched a Youtube vlog made by some tourists who went there on motorbikes and they stopped just to have a look at one of the Hydro settlement, they were invited in, given coffee and when they mentioned they wanted to find a spot nearby to pitch a tent they were told they could sleep in a hut that was unused at the time. So I guess they are indeed very nice with passersby, I guess they just have a general "rule" because they don't want travellers to rely on them.
nancyloure 1y ago
[dead]
deadbabe 1y ago
There are many cautions, but this road is nothing that a group of 4x4s couldn’t handle, perhaps in one day.
wmitty 1y ago
One of the most memorable cycle touring blogs I have read is of Bill St Onge's tour down this road. In addition to the natural difficulty of cycling this extremely remote road (both ways), he was dousing himself in so much bug repellent that his heart was constantly racing (he thought he was going to have a heart attack) and he was hallucinating (IIRC) a giant bear that was stalking him. He has taken the blog down, so I can't link it - presumably because he has published a book - https://www.amazon.com/Cycling-Quebecs-Trans-Taiga-Road-Wilderness-ebook/dp/B07YCRWHLF?ref_=ast_author_mpb https://www.amazon.com/Cycling-Quebecs-Trans-Taiga-Road-Wild...
- Lio 1y ago
  As soon as I read "gravel road" I instantly started thinking about what it would be like to cycle it. I think I'm going to have to get hold of that book.
vaindil 1y ago
I absolutely love websites like this that have a ton of information about a very niche topic. No ads or monetization, just someone who put together a very detailed website about something they love. I think my first encounter with a website like this was for the movie Donnie Darko, which I found after I first watched the movie and was trying to understand the story. The website is still up! [0] If anyone has examples of similar websites, I would absolutely love to read them. [0] http://www.donniedarko.org.uk http://www.donniedarko.org.uk

I'm itching all over from all the insect bites only reading that website.

Via Wikipedia: The average consumption of residential and agricultural customers is relatively high, at 16,857 kWh per year in 2011,[119] because of the widespread use of electricity as the main source of space (77%) and water heating (90%).[124] Hydro-Québec estimates that heating accounts for more than one half of the electricity demand in the residential sector.[125]

retrac 1y ago
Around 10% of the electricity in New York and Boston comes from the James Bay Project; the power is transferred over 1000 miles.

newyankee 1y ago

Its funny when I saw this road, I realised the distance is probably more than the N-S or E-W distance of Bangladesh , a country with > 171 million people last checked. In fact barely equal to the diagonal length of the country. How much ever one talks about fertile plains, tropical weather being able to support more people, this no is still bonkers to me

retrac 1y ago
The low population density of central Canada is not because it's not fertile. A few hundred kilometres south of the area in the article, is a vast clay belt of about half a million square kilometres. It's fertile. You can grow potatoes and oats and the usual garden vegetables up there. Somewhat settled on the Quebec side, and there are farms, but less than 5% of the area suitable for agriculture, is currently used for agriculture. It's a region about the size of France, and there are no large cities, and the total population is about 100,000. You can even see the Quebec/Ontario border from space in some spots, because the Ontario side is wholly undeveloped: https://www.google.com/maps/@48.7805302,-79.5591059,52996m/ https://www.google.com/maps/@48.7805302,-79.5591059,52996m/
- bix6 1y ago
  Does it matter if it’s fertile though? Isn’t the climate there the limiting factor on ag?
  - rfrey 1y ago
    The short growing season is somewhat offset by the very long summer days.
  - cyberax 1y ago
    You can grow plenty of food there: wheat, potatoes, apples, cabbage, etc. It's roughly at the same latitude as Moscow.
    - orthoxerox 1y ago
      Yes, and no one sane invests into agriculture around Moscow when there's much more warmer and fertile land down south. Factory farms and greenhouses? Yes, certainly, but this is driven by the food demands of a massive metropolis next door: move east or west far enough to offset this benefit and you will see scenes of rural decay.
      - decimalenough 1y ago
        That's because small-scale farming is not sufficient profitable, not because it's not possible. You can find scenes of rural decay in most any industrialized country.
      - cyberax 1y ago
        Plenty of people invest in agriculture around Moscow. That's why Russia is one of the leaders in food exports. To be fair, the bulk of the most productive Russian agricultural lands actually ends around Moscow's latitude.
  - antupis 1y ago
    It depends, like here in Finland, there is lots of farmland and active farms, but most is at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humid_continental_climate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humid_continental_climate , Norway also has a lot of farms in subarctic areas like this in the article, but Norway is substituting farming very heavily even European standards.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
noduerme 1y ago
That's not specific to this road. You could probably pick any 50,000 sq km area on the planet besides Bangladesh, and the population density would be several orders of magnitude lower than that of Bangladesh, except for maybe the few largest metropolitan areas in the world. Bangladesh can't support half its population, and Canada could probably support 10x its population, so one has to conclude that the wild difference in fertility rate is not as simple to explain as a function of how much land there is or how much food can be produced there.
LAC-Tech 1y ago
Its funny when I saw this road, I realised the distance is probably more than the N-S or E-W distance of Bangladesh , a country with > 171 million people last checked. I feel like you've just given the Canadian Government some ideas

shmerl 1y ago

Photo tour: https://www.jamesbayroad.com/ttr/virtualtour/index.html https://www.jamesbayroad.com/ttr/virtualtour/index.html

jedberg 1y ago

Intersting! I know that in the contiguous USA, you will never be more than 20 miles from a road no matter where you are, but have no idea how far one can drive from a town.

mgerdts 1y ago
This story is about a road in Canada. I doubt the 20 mile thing holds in remote parts of Alaska.
- jedberg 1y ago
  Updated my comment because you're right, I meant contiguous USA. And I'm aware it's about Canada, which is why I said "I wonder what the answer to this same question is for the USA". :)
  - bonzini 1y ago
    You probably want contiguous rather than continental. Continental does include Alaska but not Hawaii or US territories.
    - jedberg 1y ago
      You're right, and I edited my comment accordingly, but I asked Google and got this interesting AI response, so I guess a lot of people on the internet make the same mistake, since AI just echos its training data: The term "Continental United States" (CONUS) generally refers to the 48 contiguous states plus the District of Columbia, excluding Alaska and Hawaii. It encompasses the landmass of the United States located on the North American continent. While sometimes confused with the "contiguous United States," which also refers to the 48 states, "continental" specifically emphasizes the geographical location on the continent.
      - eCa 1y ago
        You would have been better off asking Wikipedia: https://simple.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_United_States https://simple.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_United_State...

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

linehedonist 1y ago

Note that all this information is 20 years old and is badly outdated. Many of the facilities mentioned (eg the Nouchimi Outfitters gas station) no longer exist. https://www.facebook.com/TabascoADV/photos/a.696618650541057/1134749456727972/?type=3 https://www.facebook.com/TabascoADV/photos/a.696618650541057...

BeFlatXIII 1y ago
The most recent update on the homepage is from 2009-03-03.
williamdclt 1y ago
I'm fascinated by these. Who are the people operating these places? Where do they live, what's their lifestyle? Who are the customers, what are their stories?
- _verandaguy 1y ago
  I don't have a definitive answer, but there's probably demand for these outside of adventure tourists trying to get to some of the most remote road-connected points in the world. The James Bay Road exists essentially as a service road for a bunch of hydroelectric infrastructure that's part of Quebec's James Bay Project. I've never gotten past planning a trip up, but I gather much of the traffic on these roads are transport trucks delivering supplies to these remote locations (beyond what can normally be shipped up there by Hydro Quebec's aviation fleet, which as I understand is mostly wet-leased from Air Inuit and can land on many of the unimproved strips near the major project sites). Anyway, little outposts like these might've been maintained by either Hydro Quebec on an emergency basis for these transports, or by volunteer (sort-of) trail associations, or by the province itself, or a combination of the three.
  - xattt 1y ago
    Similarly, the Sultan Industrial Road is a private logging road that saves a few hours of driving on the Trans-Canada between Wawa and Sudbury. However, amenities, and the likelihood of getting timely help, is low. Take your pick.

Nursie 1y ago

I'm a fan of the Gibb River Road in northern Western Australia, it's around as long, has some beautiful gorges along the way for a little swimming, there's a river crossing at the Pentecost. There are a few campsites along the way, and there is fuel at around the halfway point, and a town at each end, so it's not quite as far from civilisation as the Trans-taiga, plus you don't have to drive back the same way to get out! It's also significantly warmer, so much so that you want serious sunscreen and bugspray. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibb_River_Road https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibb_River_Road

petesergeant 1y ago

I find browsing around the map in remote Canada pretty interesting, especially the number of named settlements for which there appear to be absolutely no information or satellite evidence they exist. Take Roggan River: there’s a Wikipedia page claiming it’s a small village, and it’s on Google Maps, but there’s nothing identifiably there, and there’s no further information I can find online. The map is littered with these.

defrost 1y ago
Only a few of the villages on and about the Amistustikwach will have visible road access and cleared land plots. Many will blend in with the landscape and have river access. The google map pins are pretty approximate.
- petesergeant 1y ago
  Can you point to one matching this description on the map?
  - defrost 1y ago
    If I took the time to find one, very likely .. it was literally a daily task back in the day when I worked Canadian resource postings for the company that ran [1] before being picked up by Standard and Poor. [1] https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/campaigns/metals-mining https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/campaigns/met...
gdbsjjdn 1y ago
From personal experience, there's over a dozen fly-in communities in the Northwest Territories. No roads, the only way to reach them is snowmobiling in the winter or taking a plane from Yellowknife. My understanding is that Northern Quebec and Ontario are similar, lots of very small indigenous communities that still follow pre-colonial practices. They would get supplies by plane or by boat. It's not surprising a settlement with 50 people is hard to find on satellite.

imaginator 1y ago

It looks like the road was constructed to serve the four hydro facilities that generate power for Montreal. https://openinframap.org/#7.12/53.8/-74.103/A,B,E,I,L,O,P,T https://openinframap.org/#7.12/53.8/-74.103/A,B,E,I,L,O,P,T show's the hydro facilities and power lines weaving their way down to Montreal.

hkleppe 1y ago
Relatively long distances of road and power transmission lines to reach the two most remote locations. Especially considering they seem to be limited in capacity (only 319 and 469MW). Curious to know if something bigger was in the plans, or perhaps the road also have/had other uses?
- volkl48 1y ago
  The piece of the puzzle that you're missing is the dams at the far end of the road divert the Caniapiscau River into the La Grande River, which provides close to half the water that eventually feeds all of the generating stations downstream. Additionally, the reservoirs formed are important for making the system provide reliable power to match demand - demand for power in Quebec peaks in the coldest parts of winter, and the natural peak of runoff/river flow....is not then. So, the generation out there is useful but is not the primary reason why the road was built all the way out to there. -------- No special insight on the difficulty/expense of constructing the transmission, but ~788MW of extremely cheap power forever for constructing/maintaining ~130mi of extra transmission doesn't seem completely improbable to work out financially, especially at the time. I'll also note: - Vegetation maintenance costs are probably low given how slow things grow out there. - This was constructed long before the modern era of cheap(er) renewables. - Even today, Quebec's location, weather, and time of year of peak demand make the calculation for solar's cost-effectiveness a lot harder.

rob74 1y ago

> Along this road is also the farthest north point you can travel on a road in eastern Canada. Not to belittle the remoteness of this road, but I just find it interesting that the farthest north point you can travel on a road in eastern Canada is further south than most of Sweden (not to mention Norway or Iceland, which also have very extensive road networks). Another reminder of how important the Gulf Stream is for the climate of Europe...

nkrisc 1y ago
There’s that and of course the sheer lack of people who live in that vast wilderness larger than Sweden.
- southernplaces7 1y ago
  >There’s that and of course the sheer lack of people who live in that vast wilderness larger than Sweden. If you're referring to just Northern Quebec, then sure, the area is maybe a bit larger than Sweden, but if you're referring to northern canada, meaning all of its territories above the provinces, then that's a whole different thing. You could fit much off central and western Europe into that region with room to spare.
- deadbabe 1y ago
  With climate change this will change in the coming decades perhaps. Kind of exciting, a whole new landmass that few people have ever considered exploring and know very little about.
nucleardog 1y ago
Might be less surprising once you hear what Canadians mean when they say "Eastern Canada". Canada's divided almost exactly in half with the top half (48% of the land area) being the territories (Yukon, Northwest Territory, Nunavut; collectively "Northern Canada") and the bottom half being the provinces. When people say "Eastern Canada", they're referring to the Eastern provinces (Ontario, Quebec, the maritimes), and have already excluded the entire Northern half of the country. The nothernmost point of Eastern Canada is barely further north than the southern tip of Finland. However if you look at Northern Canada, there's stuff like Alert, NU with roads and an air strip which is the northernmost continuously inhabited place in the world. It sits more than 1200km further north than the northernmost tip of Scandinavia. My favourite Canadian geography fact: Canada shares borders with three countries. Two of those are land borders.

smikhanov 1y ago

no settlements or towns aside from Hydro Quebec's settlements for workers (these are private and are not open to the public - they will kick you out) Will they really kick a passing driver out when it's freezing outside? Heck, wherever the population is this sparse and conditions are this harsh people normally actively invite you to their places. This sounds so weird.

mousethatroared 1y ago
It's a way to get cheap tourists from invading?
- rob74 1y ago
  Well, I mean, the touristic potential of a gravel road with 666 km of taiga scenery is a bit limited (if you have seen the first 20 km, you can probably imagine the remaining 646 pretty well). And I say this as someone who has been to Iceland recently...
  - mousethatroared 1y ago
    But when there's only four houses every hundred km, a dozen dumb tourists become a very big nuisance.
nsavage 1y ago
As bad as it sounds, I'm guessing this policy is because of the indigenous peoples who live in the area and not wanting to create a pattern.
mastazi 1y ago
> people normally actively invite you to their places. I've recently watched a Youtube vlog made by some tourists who went there on motorbikes and they stopped just to have a look at one of the Hydro settlement, they were invited in, given coffee and when they mentioned they wanted to find a spot nearby to pitch a tent they were told they could sleep in a hut that was unused at the time. So I guess they are indeed very nice with passersby, I guess they just have a general "rule" because they don't want travellers to rely on them.

nancyloure 1y ago

[dead]

deadbabe 1y ago

There are many cautions, but this road is nothing that a group of 4x4s couldn’t handle, perhaps in one day.

wmitty 1y ago

One of the most memorable cycle touring blogs I have read is of Bill St Onge's tour down this road. In addition to the natural difficulty of cycling this extremely remote road (both ways), he was dousing himself in so much bug repellent that his heart was constantly racing (he thought he was going to have a heart attack) and he was hallucinating (IIRC) a giant bear that was stalking him. He has taken the blog down, so I can't link it - presumably because he has published a book - https://www.amazon.com/Cycling-Quebecs-Trans-Taiga-Road-Wilderness-ebook/dp/B07YCRWHLF?ref_=ast_author_mpb https://www.amazon.com/Cycling-Quebecs-Trans-Taiga-Road-Wild...

Lio 1y ago
As soon as I read "gravel road" I instantly started thinking about what it would be like to cycle it. I think I'm going to have to get hold of that book.

vaindil 1y ago

I absolutely love websites like this that have a ton of information about a very niche topic. No ads or monetization, just someone who put together a very detailed website about something they love. I think my first encounter with a website like this was for the movie Donnie Darko, which I found after I first watched the movie and was trying to understand the story. The website is still up! [0] If anyone has examples of similar websites, I would absolutely love to read them. [0] http://www.donniedarko.org.uk http://www.donniedarko.org.uk