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This park is over 540 square km (210 square miles) of rolling
terrain, lakes and streams. The surrounding area, the Laurentians,
is part of the youngest area in the Canadian Shield, which still
means the rocks here are over 700 million years old. Unlike
Algonquin, another Canadian Shield park,
here you will find waterfalls.
There are over 150 lakes and ponds within the park. In several places, glacial deposits have changed rivers into lakes and one lake into two or three. Lake Wapizagonke is more like a river than a lake. Like Algonquin, the trees here are a mix of southern trees like the sugar maple,yellow birch and beech, as well as the pines, firs and spruces of the northern forests. |
There are a wide variety of trails in the park, from relatively short and wheelchair accessible trails to the Deux Criques trail which requires about 7 hours to complete. Although in Québec, the term "crique" is used to mean "creek", here the term is used in its purest sense, meaning a long narrow inlet.
The moose population of the park was measured at about 300. We saw a mother and two calves feeding in a swampy area when we were there.
There are also two provincial nature reserves, Saint-Maurice and Mastigouche, in the immediate area of the park which are accessible by canoe.
The southern portions of the park extend into the Saint Lawrence lowlands. Some of these areas were at one time covered by the Champlain Sea, an arm of the ocean which extended as far as the middle Ottawa River valley.
Because most of the people in the park will be French-speaking, the interpretive program is in French.
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