Grands-Jardins National Park is one of our favorite winter hiking destinations in the province of Québec. Located in the picturesque region of Charlevoix, the park’s scenery and mountain landscapes as seen from atop the peaks in the park are simply stunning, particularly during winter. To help you discover this beautiful area and some of the best trails, we put together this Best Trails and Winter Hiking Guide for Best Trails and Winter Hiking Guide.
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Grands-Jardins National Park Location and Map
Grands-Jardins National Park is located in the Charlevoix region of the province of Québec, (link to Google Maps), north of Québec city. The closest city to the National Park is the picturesque town of Baie-Saint-Paul.
How to Get to Grands-Jardins National Park
The easiest way to reach the National Park is by car.
From Montreal: about a 4h drive (390 km)
From Québec City: about a 1h30 drive (125 km)
From Baie Saint-Paul: about a 30 min drive (30 km)
If you need to book a rental vehicle for your hiking excursion, we highly recommend using Discover Cars to get the best rates on your rental in Montreal.
We also highly recommend Airalo (eSIM card) for your connectivity needs when travelling abroad. Airalo is the world’s first and largest eSIM store with eSIM plans for 200+ countries and regions worldwide.
Alternatively, you can also reach the park from Québec City by organized transfer via the Navette Nature service, which offers bus trips on various weekend dates. The service rotates between parks, so there might be only one or two trips per park per season.
About Grands-Jardins National Park
Grands-Jardins National Park is one of 28 Quebec National Parks, the majority of which are administered by the Société des établissements de plein air du Québec (SÉPAQ) (Nunavik Parks administer the others). Although all provincial parks in Quebec have used the term “national park” since 2002, there is no connection to the federal national park system, administered by Parks Canada.
Grands-Jardins National Park was created in 1981, one of the first parks in the province to be granted such a status. Moreover, the park is one of the central areas of the Charlevoix World Biosphere Reserve, a status granted by UNESCO in 1988 just seven years after the park was created, due to the area’s rich mixture of agricultural areas, river ecosystems, tidal marshes and flats, coniferous and mixed forests, stunted vegetation and mountain tundra ecosystems.
Grands-Jardins National Park is part of the Laurentian Massif, which runs from northeastern Ontario to Labrador and is one of the oldest mountain ranges on Earth. The Laurentian massif has a continental climate, which tends to be colder and wetter than the surrounding regions. The area of Grands-Jardins itself was shaped by the last glaciation, a landscape reminiscent of Québec’s Far North. The current landscape is clearly associated with the progression of glaciers, such as the U-shaped valleys and the erratic blocks found around the park. The park is also home to over 120 bodies of water on the park’s territory, most of glacial origin.
Finally, the park is located near the site of a massive meteorite impact that occurred approximately 450 million years ago. Although the asteroid is believed to have only 2 km in diameter, the impact crater has a 54 km diameter. Most of the impact crater is below the St Lawrence River, whereas on land the meteorite impact created a flat depression, which is in sharp contrast to the surrounding mountain landscapes of the Laurentian Massif. The nearby town of Les Éboulements is situated at the exact center of the impact crater. The impact crater is visible from the top of Mont du Lac des Cygnes (our favorite hiking trail in the National Park), a mountain which itself lies near the northwest part of the depression.
All Quebec National Parks charge the same access fees and you can buy an annual pass that allows unlimited access to all parks.
Daily access fees and Annual passes
Quebec National Parks are managed by the SÉPAQ, a government agency that manages all provincial parks and wildlife preserves in Québec.
There is a limit to the number of visitors that can enter any Québec SÉPAQ National Park on any given day. It is therefore strongly recommended that you purchase your daily right of access online before a visit or that you acquire an annual pass.
The daily pass ($9.85 (2024)) can be purchased here up to 30 days before a visit.
The annual pass can be purchased here either for unlimited access to a single national park ($49.25 (2024)) or for unlimited access to all SÉPAQ national parks ($88.50 (2024)). Even if you have an annual pass, we still recommend arriving early in the morning or mid-to-late afternoon to avoid showing up to a filled parking lot.
Best Time to Visit Grands-Jardin National Park for Winter Scenery
To experience a proper winter hike and beautiful white landscapes, it’s best to plan your visit between mid-December and mid-March. That being said, there are year-to-year differences regarding the early and late winter snow conditions. If you would like to visit early or late in the winter season, it’s best to check the park and trail conditions first. You can generally find them listed at the top of the national park page by clicking the “information of the day” button. Some trails may close during the spring season snow-melt period (dates vary from year to year).
Why Hike in Winter?
– There are generally fewer people on the hiking trails, allowing for a more peaceful and enjoyable experience.
– Compacted snow generally makes the trail easier to walk on and removes the difficulties associated with walking over rocks, boulders and tree roots.
– The scenery is very different than in any other season but is no less beautiful.
Grands-Jardins National Park Opening Hours and Winter Schedule
The park has two visiting centers: the Arthabaska Visitor Center and the Mont-du-Lac-des-Cygnes Visitor Center. The latter is the first center most people will cross coming from Baie-Saint-Paul (the nearest large town), and it’s where you will find the park’s most popular hiking trails. Reaching the Arthabaskca Visitor Center from the Mont-du-Lac-des-Cygnes Visitor Center will require you to drive an additional 20 minutes, first north along the main road through the park and then west via a secondary road.
Although the Arthabaskca Visitor Center is the starting point for most of the park’s hiking trails, they are not the park’s most popular. The trails there tend to be of the easy variety and don’t reward hikers with the sweeping landscape views you’ll get from the trails that start at the Mont-du-Lac-des-Cygnes Visitor Center. Moreover, the Arthabaskca Visitor Center and its trails are only open from mid-May to mid-October, meaning that none of the trails are available during winter.
The winter season at the Mont-du-Lac-des-Cygnes Visitor Center typically runs from early December until the end of March. During this period the visitor center is open from 9 am to 4 pm, but you are free to access the trails outside of these hours provided you have paid for your park access fees online. From late October to late November, the visitor center is typically only open on weekends. For up-to-date visitor center schedules, we recommend checking the park’s schedule website page before visiting. We also recommend clicking the “information of the day” button (at the top of the same page) for up-to-date information on trail conditions.
Winter Hiking and Trail Safety Tips
In the absence of any significant recent snowfall, it is highly recommended to wear crampons/traction cleats under your shoes or boots when hiking most trails in this park, particularly any trail that has significant elevation gain. You can rent traction crampons/ice cleats to attach to your boots for 8$ (2024) at the visitor center. If you plan on needing cleats for more than 2 days, you’re probably better off buying your own.
Winter Hiking Packing List
Crampons / Ice Cleats – These are a must-have to help you with those steep ascents/descents or navigate icy trail conditions.
External Battery – Cold weather significantly affects cell phone battery drainage. Best to be prepared with an external power source to recharge your phone if needed.
Hiking poles – These can be particularly useful in winter, especially when not wearing any crampons or ice cleats.
Hand warmers – if you are like us and often remove your gloves to take pictures, having little hotties around care be hand life savers in freezing weather.
All Trails subscription – comes in really handy for areas with little or no cell reception, as the annual subscription allows you to download trail maps for offline use.
If there was a lot of recent snowfall, you might want to hike with snowshoes instead of ice cleats to help navigate the soft snow. To help you decide what footwear to bring, the national park details the recent snowfall and trail conditions via the “information of the day” button at the top of the page ( e.g. typically either densely packed snow or fresh powdered snow). The visitor center also rents out snowshoes if need be.
Also, always bear in mind that no matter how cold it is at the base of the mountain, it’s going to be even colder at the summit (and windier), so remember to dress appropriately. It’s generally recommended to wear fewer layers to start since you will warm up after a few minutes of hiking. But it’s a great idea to pack some extra warm gear for when you take a break or reach the summit.
Grands-Jardins National Park Hiking Trails
As we alluded to above, we will focus on trails beginning from the Mont-du-Lac-des-Cygnes Visitor Center, which are the only ones available in winter. We will present the four available trails, but we also briefly touch on an extra trail whose trailhead lies just outside the National Park boundaries but that you just might want to include during your visit.
Gros Pin Trail
This trail is the one exception to the rule that “all the trails start at the Visitor Center”. The trailhead is actually located in a different small carpark, 2 km south of the visitor center. The trail passes by a small pond with a beaver dam and crosses a river over a wooden bridge. It’s an easy family-friendly trail where dogs are also allowed when on a leash. There aren’t any spectacular viewpoints worthy of mention (aside from an opening along the pond), as most of the trail is under forest cover.
Distance: 2.1 km
Route Type: Loop
Elevation gain: 45 m
Start point: Car park
AllTrails rating: (4.3, 91 ratings (2024))
Duration: Most people complete the trail in about 25-35 minutes
Access Fees: SEPAQ daily rate
Not an AllTrails member yet? We highly recommend signing up for either their free or paid membership plans. The free plan allows you to find new trails and plan routes but it can only be used while hiking if you have access to mobile data. The paid membership plan (AllTrails+) allows you to download trail maps for offline use and provides live progress updates and off-route notifications.
If you are still uncertain – you should know that the All Trails mobile application was voted the 2023 iPhone App of the Year by Apple.
La Chouenne Trail
This is the easiest of the three trails that start from the visitor center (though it’s not necessarily a very easy trail – we would rate it somewhere between easy and moderate), but it will still provide you with stunning panoramic 360-degree views of the surrounding mountains and the glacier-carved valley below from a 730 m high summit.
Distance: 4.7 km
Route Type: Out & Back
Elevation gain: 193 m (cumulative elevation gain of 201 m)
Start point: Trailhead & Visitor Center
AllTrails rating: (4.7, 870 ratings (2024))
Duration: Most people complete the trail in about 1h20-1h40
Access Fees: SEPAQ daily rate
This trail shares the first kilometre with the next trail (Mont-du-Lac-des-Cygnes Trail). The first half kilometre is fairly flat, which is then followed by a steady incline for the next kilometre (averaging about a 10% slope). After another fairly flat half-kilometre, a final shorter (0.5 km) but steeper (averaging about a 16% slope) ascent is required to reach the summit.
Mont-du-Lac-des-Cygnes Trail
This is our favorite trail to do in the park. It’s not as long as the next one (see below), but it’s still quite challenging and leads to the same summit of Mont-du-Lac-des-Cygnes, which lies at an elevation of 980 m.
Distance: 8.9 km
Route Type: Out & Back
Elevation gain: 421 m (cumulative elevation gain of 434 m)
AllTrails rating: (4.8, 1704 ratings (2024))
Duration: Most people complete the trail in about 2h45-3h15
Access Fees: SEPAQ daily rate
Since this is our favorite trail, we wrote up a separate and more complete guide on it. For more information, be sure to check out our Winter Hiking Guide for the Mont-du-Lac-des-Cygnes trail.
Le Pioui Trail
This trail’s main reward is also the Mont-du-Lac-des-Cygnes summit. But unlike the previous trail, this one follows a long looping path around the eastern end of the park, reaching another summit first (Mont Piou), before tracking along a ridgeline to eventually climb the Mont-du-Lac-des-Cygnes summit.
Distance: 11.1 km
Route Type: Out & Back
Elevation gain: 430 m (cumulative elevation gain of 608 m)
AllTrails rating: (4.8, 2471 ratings (2024))
Start point: Trailhead & Visitor Center
Duration: Most people complete the trail in about 4h-4h30
Access Fees: SEPAQ daily rate
Which Grands-Jardins National Park Trail to Choose?
If you only have a day to spend in the park, admittedly the one that will provide the most stunning panoramic viewpoints is the Pioui trail, but the Mont-du-Lac-des-Cygnes trail isn’t far behind.
In fact, because it takes on average about one hour less to complete, we prefer to do the Mont-du-Lac-des-Cygnes trail in the morning (or afternoon) and combine it with another trail that lies just outside the park’s boundaries (a 5-minute drive away): the Mont du Dome trail.
If you are in the area for two days, then you might want to do the Piou trail one day, and then combine the Chouenne trail with the Mont du Dome trail on the following day.
Other Grands-Jardins National Park & Winter Trail Tips
Canine companions: Dogs (on a leash) are only allowed on the Chouenne trail and the Gros-Pin trail.
Other Winter Activities: The park additionally offers shared snowshoeing and nordic skiing trails. They can be accessed further up the main road that goes through the national park. They are mostly considered easy trails. For more information, you can consult the park’s winter trail map.
Toilets: Public Toilets are available at the visitor center. Dry toilets can be found along the Pioui and the Mont-du-Lac-des-Cygnes trails, in addition to in the Gros Pin trail car park.
Where to Stay Near Grands-Jardins National Park
Without a doubt, our favorite place to stay in the area is at the Hotel & Spa Le Germain Charlevoix, located in the picturesque town of Baie Saint Paul, located a short 30-minute drive from the National Park. This modern boutique hotel is located just on the outskirts of town and features barn-inspired wood features throughout, with rooms available in five different pavilions. Also, as stated in the name, the hotel features a swimming pool, a steam room, a Jacuzzi, and a sauna, in addition to housing two on-site restaurants and a breakfast buffet.
The town itself is quite charming, and we put together a Baie-Saint-Paul Visiting Guide to help discover all the key attractions in the area.
Other Great Hiking Trails in the Area
Beyond the National Park, there are several other great hiking trails in the area, and we describe several of them in our guide on the Best Hiking Trails near Baie-Saint-Paul.
Want to Discover More Hiking Trails In Southern Québec?
You might be interested in these pages:
Best Hiking Trails Near Montreal
Best Hiking Trails in the Eastern Townships
Quebec Hiking Trails that Are Stunning in Winter
Best Hiking Trails Near Mont Tremblant
Photography Gear
If you like our photography, you might be interested in some of the gear we use to shoot our travel and hiking destinations.
Camera Body – Nikon Z 6ii Fx-series Mirrorless Body
Main Lens – NIKON 24-120mm F/4G ED VR AF-S
Zoom Lens – Sigma 745-306 150-600mm f/5-6.3
Polarizing filters – Urth Circular Polarizing (CPL)
Camera Tripod – K&F Concept 64-inch Camera Tripod
Mini-tripod – Lammcou Flexible Camera Tripod
Camera/hiking backpack – Vanguard Alta Rise 48 Backpack
Universal Travel Adapter – VYLEE Universal International Power Travel Plug
Other Travel Essentials
Travel Insurance
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e-Sim cards
Airalo is the world’s first and largest eSIM store with eSIM plans for 200+ countries and regions worldwide. With Airalo eSIMs, travellers can get connected the moment they land at their destination and avoid nasty data roaming charges
eSIMS are a sustainable alternative to single-use SIM cards – they are 100% digital, require less energy to produce and be re-used rather than disposed of.
Car Rentals
Discover Cars is our go-to website for car rentals. We almost always find our preferred rate there.
Transfer from Airport
Welcome Pickups is our favourite private transfer service, which you can pre-book at a fixed price. Currently available in 220 cities all over the world (mostly in Europe, but with several major cities in Asia, the Middle East and the US).
Kiwitaxi is another private transfer service – we haven’t tried it yet, but it’s currently available in a few more countries (102 as of 2024).
Hotels and Accommodations (coming soon)
Photography Prints
If you found this blog useful, you can help support our blog by purchasing low-cost digital prints. Printed physical prints are also available for purchase.
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Well, that wraps it up! We hope you enjoyed our Grands-Jardins National Park Winter Hiking Guide and that it will prove useful for planning your hiking trip.
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