bikepacking.quebec website is shaping up
Welcome on bikepacking.quebecblog! This website was created for the Québec Bikepacking Traverse project, a 3,100-km itinerary linking Western and Eastern Quebec. The website is online since January 2020 and was slowly built since, being known by few discussion groups of bikepacking enthusiasts. A hosted forum permitted the creation of a start of a community interested in improving the itinerary. More functionalities were added as time passed. A page layout aiming to be practical and attractive was worked on. Today seems like the day to officially launch the platform.
Behind the production
Etienne always has loved discovering his surroundings by bike. As a little boy, he was negotiating every summer with his parents an extension of his allowed territory where he could go bike in the forest trails of his Quebec City suburb. He got initiated to bike touring at 19, crossing Canada from Newfoundland to British Columbia. After crossing a continent East to West, doing North to South was the way to go! Seven years later, he starts a journey in Northern Canada that brought him 22 months later in Argentina Tierra del Fuego. During this trip, he figures that he's having way more fun on the remote roads, generally unpaved, that on the well-paved main roads. If at least he had left with a more adapted equipment... his bike will suffer.
Etienne Théroux
A few years later, after getting a bikepacking bike, he enjoys a few weeks vacation to tour Gaspesie, first along the St. Lawrence, but more and more on forestry roads in the heart of the peninsula's mountains.
Already having in mind since a few years to do long-run bikepacking itineraries like the Great Divide Mountain Bicycle Route in USA and the Baja Divide in Mexico, he thought that Quebec deserves its equivalent. Camping by a lake in Bas-St-Laurent, having only a territorial beaver as a companion, the Québec Bikepacking Traverse (QcBT) was born. At least, in his mind, and later, on a map.
"Each growing market gets a more diverse segmentation through time. This is when bikepacking gets into the game."
De la pertinence d’un tel projet
Quebec is a territory of bicycle enthusiasts. Bicycle touring itineraries has been developed in almost every touristic regions, incited by the Route Vertenetwork, propelled since two decades by Vélo Québec.
A study published in 2016 by the Transat Chair in Tourism of ESG UQAM on the positive economic effects of bicycle touring revealed that cyclists touristic spendings in Quebec in 2015 were estimated at 696.6 million dollars. About 108 million dollars were spendings attributed specifically to people coming from outside Quebec.
Each growing market gets a more diverse segmentation through time. This is when bikepacking gets into the game. For some people, biking nearby cars on well paved roads or along bicycle paths were all the services are accessible isn't enough. Going further, more remote. Having to collect and filter the water from the creek. Camping by an uninhabited lake. Climbing more mountains. Discovering places were few cars can or dare to venture.
Bikepacking exists since decades, it's just that it probably wasn't named this way. There has been a democratization of the activity in the last years though. More products and accessories specialized on bikepacking can be found on the market. There is also a better diffusion of quality information about the activity, like the bikepacking.comwebsite, a reference in the field, that strive to do since 2012.
It's only the beginning
For now, only 25% of the route on the planning is verified. And this number is just about themain QcBT route . The idea is also to make a networkout of it, linking the main route with urban centers, adding here and there some ways to reach an other segment and finally, with all that, creating loops for travelers having only a few days or a weekend to settle an adventure.
With summer knocking on our doors and a renewed interest from Quebec cyclists to travel closer to home and far away from the masses, bikepacking.quebec calls on the community motivated to participate on this project to go on the roads close to home, verify the routes and take notes about the attractions, the kind of roads and places to camp and get supplies.
You are all now cordially invited to visit this website and learn more about the project!