Earlier this year, my adventure buddy and nursing-school friend Lexi proposed that we go ziplining…. in February!! Yes, that sounds crazy, and yes it was – crazy amazing! The “Snowman Adventure” at Arbraska (Parc Lafleche location) was an awesome day trip that I can’t recommend HIGHly enough! In last week’s post My Bucket List Life, I mentioned ziplining briefly, but I thought this experience deserved a post of its own. Y’all gotta know the awesomeness that is Parc Lafleche!
I am well known to my friends for being one of those weirdos who actually enjoys winter more than summer (I cannot handle the heat, but am perfectly comfortable in the snow and freezing winds of the Great White North)! Because of this, my friends come to me with all sorts of winter adventure activities, and I love it! A few years ago, my friend Passportunities got me involved with snowshoeing, and I’ve been hooked ever since!! There’s something about hiking or skating in the winter that doesn’t feel like exercise to me (even though I know it is), and being outside in nature is my ultimate happy place!
So anyways, there is a small town about 40minutes drive from Ottawa called Val-De-Monts, QC (part of the Laurentian forest). There, the Lafleche Cave is located, and they’ve built a little park full of hiking trails and aerial courses (ziplining runs) around the cave! These are not your average ziplines though, there’s a built in obstacle course between runs, too – how fun!! I’ve been wanting to go to one of these for a while, and Lexi found a Groupon to Parc Lafleche (click on that link for the discount, if you’re a Groupon user!!) as part of their SNOWMAN ADVENTURE package, which sounded perfect for both of us!
It was a beautiful day trip filled with fun and adventure! We went snowshoeing, enjoyed a hot chocolate by the fire, went ziplining, and explored/learned about this local cave (SO NEAT)!
SNOWMAN ADVENTURE: Part One, Workout Time!
We started the beautiful sunny early afternoon off by signing in and being lent a pair of snowshoes (even though we had our own, they were included, so we figured we might as well), and heading out on the 2km trail! I don’t know the name of the trail, but we left right from the visitor’s centre and headed straight up the mountain (steep incline for a while) and into the forest! Little did we know, it would be a bit more difficult than we had bargained for due to the fact that Mother Nature had dumped 15cm of very fluffy snow of the woods the night before – so we were breaking our own new trail through the snow (thank god for sturdy snowshoe rentals)! This is where the workout came in, and we relished in the exercise! We both hike/snowshoe fairly often, so it was nice to have a little challenge. The trail was a GORGEOUS view the whole time – the sun was shining into the mountainous forest, we passed by a large lake, and we got a view of the aerial park from above; we loved it! At checkpoints throughout the trail, they had riddles strewn about – a mix of really easy to really hard. Some of them we never figured out because we didn’t know where to find the answer sheet, so maybe we’ll solve them next time! I thought that was a cute/fun addition to a hike :). It took us exactly 1 hour to finish the trail, and we were pretty ready for a break after that, so we headed back inside!
Next up on the day, we had to wait for the rest of the group to catch up to us. There were 7 people in our tour group, but we got the earliest start, so we waited a while for the others to show up! The guides were kind enough to light a toasty wood-stove fire, and filled our cups with homemade hot chocolate. It was the perfect way to warm up after wandering around in -25degree Celsius weather, and also a good cool down from the workout. We got chatting with some of our group members and it felt like a lovely cabin-camping getaway!
SNOWMAN ADVENTURE: Part Three, Zipping Through The Winter Air!
The most exhilarating part of the day was definitely the ZIPLINING. I’m a big fan of heights and jumping off things (yes, I know that sounds psycho, but its FUN okay?!), so this appealed to me greatly! We strapped on some super flattering (not) helmets and hiked up the hill a ways until we got to one of the longer ziplines. Lafleche has a whole series of aerial courses/zipline runs, but for the purposes of today, we were just going to enjoy the one! The guide showed us how to hook ourselves to the line, how/where to hold on to the bracket, what to do at the end to stop yourself, and then he zipped away as a demonstration and never came back! Hahaha only in Quebec would they leave the participants alone without any instructors around – fend for yourselves, dummies! My friend Lexi was the courageous soul who offered to go first and show us how it’s done, such a baller! The picture below is of her zipping away into the sunset! I was next and, as I tend to do out of nerves, I jumped well before the group finished counting me down to GO. I was off, and I was LOVING IT. I know ziplining isn’t a very hardcore thing to do in the adrenaline-junkie world, but man its still such a whirlwind, and I found it exhilarating AF at the time! The zipline was only a few hundred metres (don’t remember exactly how long), but the winter wind smashing into my face + the frozen lake below me + the cave entrance to my right + zooming into a dense forest made it feel like I was flying straight through a Game Of Thrones scene and into oblivion… it was awesome! 🙂
If chilly winter adventures aren’t your style (ie, if you’re in the majority of the population), you can check out their warm weather Aerial Course ziplines, too! I know I’m going back to try it out, 100%!
Okay so I’ve never been a big geology geek by any means, but I find caves SO FASCINATING. If you are curious and want a safe place to explore one, you definitely want to check this place out!! It’s so close to Ottawa and its SO NEAT. We had an amazing guide/teacher who’d actually worked in this cave for 10 years, and he studies the cave so intensely that sometimes he SLEEPS in it for weeks at a time during research trips! Also he was very funny and clever, so we enjoyed it greatly. And, obviously, he knew SO much about the cave and landscape and Canadian geography/geology, that he was just an endless wealth of information. My favourite part was seeing the stalagmites and stalactites (if you know which is which, you’re doing better than me, because I already forget and I was just there two months ago lol), AND there were tiny crystallized bats that were hibernating and insulated themselves with snow – HOW COOL IS THAT!?! Both things are pictured below. We were equipped with helmets and headlamps, and explored as deep into the cave as we were physically able to without putting on wetsuits. Wanna hear something SO COOL? Even though it was -25C outside, the temperature inside the cave was at +4C, and it always stays that way!!! We were very comfortable and man, it was intriguing. As the Outaouais website description explains: “The cave is filled with anecdotes and mysteries that will amaze you. For ten years, speleologists have come on site to explore the cave and discover hidden passages.” We spent about 45min in the cave, but I could have explored and asked him questions all day! When we emerged from the cave, the sun was started to set over the snowy mountains, and it was a scene straight out of a movie – so stunning!
Sigh, what a wonderful day we had, thanks for letting me relive it in this blog post!
… I love exploring nature, I love random adventures, I love the Canadian landscape, I love learning new things and having fun doing it, I love snowshoeing, I love ziplining, I love friends who are up for anything, I love Groupon deals, and OMG I just loved this day! 🙂
Diaries Of A SpaceCase* 
This sounds so fun!!! I’m definitely going to have to try it and groupons are so perfect for trying new things! Great review!
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