Belvedere Couer de Plateaux / Chutes de Picot

Driving from Campbellton, NB to Hopetown, QC | Hiking to Belvedere Coeur de Plateaux | Hiking the Chutes de Picot Trail | Hiking to Belvedere des Deux-Rivieres | June 2024

We left our campsite in New Brunswick in the early afternoon, after Curtis’ meeting and having some lunch. We drove a little ways West to cross the Restigouche River into Quebec on the Interprovincial bridge. There, we continued driving West on QC-132 passing the town, and took a right on Route Lagache towards some hiking trails. Now, this is where I must share our two challenges we faced during our time in Quebec: The first was language. French is the official language of the land and the primary language of most of the population. Everything is required to be written in French and very seldom is it written in English. And while many people are bilingual, this trip brought us to more remote places where that was less common. Thankfully Curtis took French in high school, and had been brushing up on it on DuoLingo, but as he put it, he can read French and make out sentences alright, speak it okay, but has the most trouble understanding when people speak it. It’s fine, we made it through this trip with minimal issues and mostly just mild embarrassment than anything else. It was just more of a challenge here than any other time we’ve traveled to Canada. That being said, we’ll usually refer to sites and locations by their French name since that will be the best way to find more information about them online.

The second challenge, and the one that sort of affected us more, is the paywall that comes with so many trails in Quebec. In Quebec, they have lots of what they call national parks, (which are actually provincial parks, but Quebec considers itself a separate nation within a nation…it’s very political and not what this is about), and each one has a per-person per-day fee. For so many trails, parks, peaks, we could be looking at a $30+CAD fee just for day use, and most of the trails Charlotte wouldn’t be allowed on — and we would still have to pay for me to enter even if I wasn’t hiking. Additionally, if you don’t have an annual pass, you have to schedule in advance where and when you want to visit a park. I’m sure we’ll bring this up more later, but what it all comes down to is that someday we will have to specifically plan a trip to visit all the ‘national parks’ we want to visit in Quebec, suck up the annual fee for that one time, and do it all then. For this trip, we chose to avoid them since we couldn’t hike in them together, and instead mostly focused on the free, dog friendly, easier trails when hiking together, or the free, good places for Char and I to hang out while Curtis hiked.

That being said, today we did pay to hike to 2 short, easy lookouts, the first up on the plateau and another back in town near the confluence of the two rivers. It was about $17CAD for the 2 of us to hike to 2 lookouts, or ‘Belvederes.’ Knowing what we now know, I’m not sure we would have paid for these, but since it was still early on in the trip and we didn’t realize the potential cost of what it would be to hike EVERYTHING on our list, we still paid the fee. Our first stop was at the Belvedere Coeur de Plateaux, which followed the IAT/SIA over a plateau to a cool looking lookout tower. Curtis and I took turns climbing, and enjoying higher up views of the farmland and surrounding mountains in QC and NB. We saw a through-hiker pass by while here as well.

Next, we drove to a waterfall hike that was also along the IAT/SIA, and this time was free. The gravel road getting there was narrow and a little rough, but we made it to the parking lot and found one other car here. We ran into the other hikers shortly after on the trail. They started speaking to us in French, but switched to English when they found out we were American. They were very friendly, and since one of the first things they had asked was if Charlotte was blind, Curtis made sure to ask for the right words to use knowing that we would likely have to use that phrase throughout this trip. “Elle est aveugle”. We then said goodbye and continued on the trail.

The trail started off very easy and flat, following the stream, lush with green and pines all around. However, as we continued it became more narrow and with more roots in the trail, making it more difficult for Charlotte. At that point, I knew that there would eventually be stairs, so I picked up the pace so that I could walk down to the falls and then let Curtis go, saving Charlotte from the stress of what was to come. I crossed the stream on a rather rickety bridge, then continued down the trail. It became more muddy and steep, and eventually came to the steps. The stairs were rather narrow and steep, and also maybe not the most secure staircase I’ve seen…definitely not something Charlotte would have any interest in. But I continued down, and made it to the base of the falls (known as Chutes de Picot). I took some pictures, then hurried back up so Curtis could have a turn. He and Charlotte had been waiting at a bench that was placed near the bridge, so when she was ready to continue walking, I lead her back across the bridge and towards the trailhead. Curtis eventually caught up, and we all finished the trail together.

We drove back down off the plateau and to highway 132, and headed back towards town where we believed we could drive up to the second lookout tower that we had paid for. However, when we arrived we realized that you had to park at the visitor center across the road and walk a very steep trail up to the tower. We knew right away that Charlotte wouldn’t be up for that, so she and I settled down at a nearby picnic table while Curtis hiked up to the top. In the end, I decided to forgo hiking up, as it was now mid-afternoon and we still had 2 hours to drive to our intended campsite for the night.

We drove 2 hours East on QC-132, to the town of Hope, QC. The drive was incredibly scenic, with the river to our right and mountains to the left. Looking across at New Brunswick was equally as scenic, and we watched it disappear into a sliver on the horizon as the river grew wider. We drove through many small towns on our way, with more traffic than we were expecting, yet nowhere near as busy or populated as any coastal highway in the Northeast US would have been. When we made it to Hope, we turned right on Rte du Quai, passed a baseball diamond and lookout, and drove down to the beach where overnight parking is allowed. There were a handful of other vans and campers spread out, but still plenty of room for us to pick a spot and have our own space. We enjoyed going for walks on the rocky beach, then had dinner and relaxed at a picnic table. We weren’t able to see the sun set to the Northwest, but it cast a beautiful pink light on the clouds to the Southeast.

Before retiring to the van for the night, we decided to take Charlotte on a quick stroll up to the lookout. But it was then that she suddenly had a burst of energy, and found a trail up at the top that she really wanted to hike. And so we let her lead us for almost a quarter mile on this trail before deciding it was getting too dark, and promising her that we would return to finish it in the morning. Naturally, when morning came, she was less interested in the hike, but it was still a delight to see her get excited for this and be so interested in walking when normally, she’s only in it for the smells!