Riding the most remote road in North America on two wheels - The Trans Taiga Road

[GravelRider]

Hello everyone. I signed up here last year, but haven't posted yet. So I guess this is a ride report and introduction. I'm planning to do this trip again next year, but in my F150 with family and travel trailer in tow this time. This is a trip report from 2018 (copy and pasted from Advrider). Enjoy.

The Trans Taiga Road is the most remote road in North America. It is located in northern Quebec. At its end, we will be 463 miles by road from the nearest town, which is the furthest from any town by road in all of North America. It is 414 miles long, all unpaved gravel road. Because it is a dead end road, it means it will actually be 828 miles of gravel. Fuel is very limited. The longest stretch of road without fuel is just under 400 miles, which means we will have to pack a significant amount of extra fuel. The road was built to access the Hydro Quebec dams of the remote north. There is very sparse traffic on the road, and even fewer tourists.

On the way up, we will be riding the Route du Nord, also known as the North Road. It is roughly 250 miles of unpaved road. It meets up with the James Bay Road about halfway up to Radisson, a town that services the Hydro Quebec projects.

The riders:

Max (GravelRider). Riding a WR250R

Neal. Riding a Suzuki Vstrom 650

Neal rode up from South Carolina to meet me at my house in northeast Pennsylvania. We spent the day prepping the bikes and getting them loaded up. Plan was to leave out at 0400 next morning.

The bikes ready to go

Neal getting his new tires spooned on

 

[GravelRider]

Day 1


Hazleton, PA to Route du Norde


887 miles total, 30 miles gravel


We got up at 3:30 am, said bye to the wives, and were out the door at 4 am. The goal today was to make big miles, with intentions of getting as close to Chibougamau as possible on our first day. With that in mind, there aren’t many pictures. We took the super slab, route 81, all the way north up close to the Canadian border, then two lane to the border itself. The border crossing took about 20 minutes or so, and all of that time was waiting in line. From there we headed north through Ottawa, up 117 north, then to 113, through Miquelon and Waswanipi. On our way into Chapais, we got stuck behind a bicycle road race, being escorted by the police. That was a fun way to waste 45 minutes riding 20 mph… From there we made it to Chibougamau right before dark. It seemed like a cool town with a lot going on. There were tons of cool bars and restaurants there. If we weren’t trying to beat the night closing in to get a camp spot, we would have stopped and looked around. However, we got fuel, rode through town, and searched for the Route du Norde.


Stopped to get gas somewhere in NY

Getting ready to cross into Canada

Ottawa

Stopped to exchange cash in Maniwaki, I believe

The many sections of road construction, and Neal’s take on it

Selfie

Beginning the Route du Nord

It was dark by the time we made it to the Route du Nord. We decided to camp at the nearest campground. We were hoping for just some picnic tables, but it looked like a more established campground was closer, and we were ready to get off the road. The James Bay website travel guide said there was a SEPAQ campground at km 12. As much as we looked, we couldn’t find it. We went up and down from km 8 to 16 a few times, and then took a few side logging roads, but didn’t find it. We were just going to wild camp, but we were nearly out of water, and there weren’t any good flat spots next to a water source, so we continued north. At km 32 we saw a sign for Baie Penicouane, which had camping. Perfect! We continued down the road about 5 or so miles and found a very nice campground with running water, bathrooms, the works!


We started setting up camp when we discovered that there was a hornet nest under the picnic table. Three stings later, we decided to pick a new campsite.

We had a couple drinks, had some camp food, and went to bed quite easily after 18 hours and nearly 900 miles on the road.

 

[GravelRider]

Day 2[/U]

Route du Nord to Nemaska to Eastmain Rd to James Bay Road.

365 miles, 282 miles gravel.

We had planned on sleeping in, given the long day we had the day before. However, we were up around 6 am. I was up first, and headed down to the bathrooms, which had showers. I enjoyed a long, hot shower, as I knew this would be the last one for a little while.

We made some breakfast, coffee, and talked about the plans for the day. Neal has a French press for his Jetboil. Maybe a couple of issues getting it figured out…

We noticed the skies were looking increasingly black, so we checked the Inreach weather. It said there was a 40% chance of rain today. The clouds tended to make us think that number was closer to 100% chance.


Because we knew rain was imminent, we hurriedly packed up camp, and then we stopped into the camp office to pay for the site. The campground we stayed at was the Baie Penicouane SEPAQ campground. It was actually really nice. It had bathrooms with running water, including hot showers, a sink area, lockers for food and cooking equipment, a camp store, and some cabins. However, it was $40. Which was roughly $40 more than we had planned on spending on camping during the trip.


The campsite

The food hanging in a tree to keep it safe from the bears

As we were leaving, it started raining. We set off up the Route du Nord in the pouring rain. Fortunately it only rained for maybe an hour or two. The road conditions were excellent on the road. We were able to maintain a speed of 50-60 mph on the straights and 40-50 mph on the turns pretty comfortably.

Along the way, we stopped at this bridge:

After about 150 miles of gravel road, I managed to drop my bike on the only 50 foot section of paved road we came across. I managed to not fully extend the kickstand. Lol.


Here I am discussing the importance of taking a picture of a dropped bike before picking it up

Some more pictures along the North Road

 

[GravelRider]

The dreaded road graders…

They actually weren’t as bad as people make them out to be. First of all, they’re absolutely necessary to maintaining a gravel road like this. Otherwise, they will be covered in large potholes and washboard. The surface is a bit softer and more squirrely where a grader recently was, but it’s more of a nuisance than anything. The only real danger is the mound of dirt in the center of the road they sometimes leave behind. Avoid this and you’ll be fine. When it comes time to passing the grader, just take it slow crossing this mound of dirt. Of course, if you're on 4 wheels or more, it doesn't really matter much!

I can’t wait to get rid of this extra tire. It’s weight mounted high, and my camelback pushes against it while riding.

The plan was to stop in Nemaska for fuel and lunch and then head out to the James Bay via the rest of the Route du Nord. Once we got close to Nemaska, we had to take a left turn to continue on the Route du Nord. At this left turn, the road conditions deteriorated a bit, and we slowed down to about 40-50 mph on the straights. Next up, Nemaska:


The road into Nemaska

Nemaska was larger than I had expected, but similar to other Cree villages I’ve seen. Most of the larger buildings in the center of town looked to be government buildings of some sort or the other. All of the roads in town (and leading to town) were dirt. We stopped at what we thought was a restaurant in town, but it turned out to be a convenience store.


They then directed us back to the mall in town, which was a fairly large government-building-looking structure. There were no signs on it to indicate it was the mall. My experience has been that the buildings in the Cree settlements rarely have signage, and when they do, they are very small and nondescript. I assume this is because they are small towns without a lot of visitors, so signs wouldn’t really be needed. Anyhow, we headed into the mall, which was really just a building that housed a grocery store, general store, bank, storage area in an empty store front, and the restaurant.

 

[GravelRider]

We stopped and I finally got some poutine.

Not the best poutine I’ve ever had, but I certainly finished it!


We also called the Hydro Quebec power plant and set up a tour for tomorrow morning at 9 am. We were still a few hours from Radisson, so we headed north on James Bay Road with plans of getting to about an hour away from Radisson and then finding a camp site.


Multiple people had told us to take the Eastmain Road instead of continuing the last bit of the North Road. Supposedly the gravel was in better condition and it was a significantly longer portion of gravel to ride, so we decided to take this route. We fueled up and set off. Premium fuel was available here, for $1.70 a liter, if I remember correctly.


Crossing the 52nd parallel

Neal doing some sort of weird dance move on the Eastmain Road

There was a fuel stop about 50 miles from the James Bay Road on the Eastmain Road. We didn’t fuel up there, so I’m not sure about prices or premium availability, but it is there if anyone else is taking this route.

Drop number two for me. This time the kickstand sunk into the road surface. Whoops!

The Eastmain Road is great. Conditions were excellent, and it was an interesting road.

We passed by the large Eastmain Dam

 

[GravelRider]

From there we continued on to meet up with the James Bay Road. The scenery was great on this section. I wish I would have stopped to take more pictures.

After getting onto the James Bay Road, we headed south a few miles to Km 381 to fill up on gas, and then headed north.


Relais outfitter at Km 381 of the James Bay Road

We found a camp site about 70 miles from Radisson, at Lac Miron.

The first thing we did was scrounge some firewood. There wasn’t much wood to be had here, but we made the best of it.

 

[GravelRider]

We set up camp, and then focused on the most important part of the camping plan for the night… Debauchery. We drank roughly half our body weights in alcohol and stayed up way too late. Neal was drinking Canadian Club (you know, when in Rome…) and I was drinking Everclear mixed with Tang. Everclear is never a great choice to drink, but it packs well, because you only need to pack a fraction of what you would normally pack.

At about 1:30 am, we finally decided to go to bed. Should be an easy morning…

 

[GravelRider]

Day 3

James Bay Road to Radisson to Chisasibi to the Trans Taiga Road

303 miles, about 60 miles gravel

Rough morning. Rough. My alarm went off at 5:30, so we could make it to the tour. I promptly hit off instead of snooze and then woke up two hours later with a splitting headache in the pouring rain. I took some Aleve, and started getting my stuff packed up. We were both pretty hungover, and didn’t end up getting out of camp in time for the tour. It was still raining pretty good when we set out.

Some more pictures of the campsite

We slogged up the James Bay Road into Radisson in the pouring rain, and got there at about 10:30. I called the power plant and apologized for missing the tour and tried to set up a new one, but there were none in English available. Oh well.

We rode through town and looked around

Then we headed to the gas station to get some gas. Their super unleaded pump was broken, so I had to use ordinaire and added some octane booster. One thing I don’t like about the little WRR is that it takes 91 octane.

The most Canadian beer cooler ever (though it did have Coors light inside)

We decided to head up to the dam and at least check it out. The road out to the dam was freshly graded and muddy. It was quite a chore riding in it, but we made it to the dam.

View from the dam

 

[GravelRider]

The spillway was very impressive. It was absolutely massive. During the construction of the dam, they needed to divert the flow of the river, so this was built. Pictures just don’t do it justice.

We then went over the dam and out to some dirt roads north of the dam. Great riding! It went from small dirt roads, to mud pits, to double track. It ended at a small river.

Just past the dam when the road was still wide and well maintained

We stopped and looked around and then came to the realization that this was the worst mosquito infestation that we had ever experienced. They absolutely swarmed us. I almost dropped my bike swatting them away as I was getting it turned around. We high tailed it out of there and back to radisson.

From there, we rode out to Chisasibi. Chisasibi is pretty happening Cree village with a population of about 5000 people. It was originally located on Fort George Island, a large island in the river that empties into the James Bay. However, Hydro Quebec was concerned about the increased river flow eroding the island away, so they were relocated to present day Chisasibi.

Everyone we encountered here was very friendly and chatty. They all wanted to know where we came from, where we were headed to, and what we thought of the area. We rode around a bit and then went to the restaurant in the civic center.

The outside of the mall

The inside of the mall

 

[GravelRider]

The civic center with the restaurant inside

The restaurant

Neal had chicken poutine. I had a pepperoni pizza. Not the best pizza I’ve ever had, but it was hot and filling.

After lunch, we headed out to Long Point, which is the section of land that leads to James Bay. James Bay (which is really just the southern portion of Hudson Bay) is the southernmost extension of the Arctic Ocean. The goal was to make it here, dip our tires in the Bay, and take some pictures.

Long Point:

We then rode to the ferry crossing to get to Fort George Island. I had wanted to take the ferry over and explore, but there was a long line, and we didn’t want to waste time waiting around to ride it, as it was already getting late in the day.

We fueled up at the gas station, with plans to get to the Trans Taiga today. We have 310 miles from Chisasibi to the nearest gas station at Mirage. My fuel carrying equipment I have is my 5 gallon tank, two half gallon Touratech containers, a 2 gallon Rotopax, and two 2.5 gallon Dromedary water bags, for a total of over 13 gallons. Neal has a 5 gallon tank and two 2.5 gallon Dromedaries, for a total of over 10 gallons. Today was the first day that we used the Dromedaries. They worked with mixed success. Mine were absolutely bulletproof the entire trip. Neal’s were a different story that I’ll detail later in the ride report. They do smell of gas, as the fumes seep through. I wouldn’t keep them inside a bag, but strapped to the outside, they worked great (for me).

For this part of the trip, I only filled one of the dromedaries.

We rode down James Bay Road, past the Radisson airport.

A few miles further down James Bay Road was the start of the Trans Taiga Road:

 

[GravelRider]

The gravel was very well maintained during the first several kilometers of gravel, and we comfortably set into a pace of about 50-55 mph.

We stopped for the night at Km 56 at a campground on Lac Sakami. The first order of business was pumping some drinking water from the lake and gathering firewood. I have a Katadyn water filter that I’ve had for probably ten years and many, many gallons of water, and it’s always performed flawlessly. Well, my luck came to an end. It started leaking a bit of water and lost pressure, which meant a lot longer pumping times. As the trip progressed, it got worse and worse, and eventually became the bane of our existence.

After gathering wood and getting water, came the main attraction for the night. Changing my rear tire. I was running IRC TR8 tires. They have great offroad traction, they’re DOT rated, are reasonably priced, and have good onroad manners as well. However, they don’t last terribly long. I can get 2500 miles out of a rear, 3000 if I’m really pushing it, but at that point there’s no tread left. This trip will be about 3500 miles, so I definitely needed to pack a new rear tire with me to change out partway through. I figured changing it out at the beginning of the Trans Taiga would be best, since I would have over 900 miles of gravel ahead of me.

I got the old tire spooned off and the new one mounted. Time to air up.

After the tire was changed, I was finally able to get rid of this damn tire in the dumpster! What I also noticed was that there was a ton of bear ******** around the dumpster. The dumpster was a couple of miles from camp, but we knew there were plenty of bears around.

We hung out, made a fire, and then hit the sack for the night. We did make sure to hang our food for the night since there were bears around.

Our campsite

Food hung up out of the way of the bears, or at least we hoped!

 

[GravelRider]

Day 4

Trans Taiga Road to Caniapiscau

385 miles. All gravel.

We woke up to beautiful weather. In fact, it was the first day that it didn’t rain in the morning. We packed up, had some breakfast, and hit the road at about 9 am. Road conditions on the Trans Taiga were very good. However, the conditions on this road can change quite rapidly. One minute you’ve got perfect gravel going 60-65 mph, then it all of a sudden changes to deep squirrelly gravel that requires a pretty rapid slow down. Overall though, the conditions were good, and we were able to maintain a speed of about 55-60 mph on the straights and 45-50 mph on the turns.

I will stop and discuss riding gravel briefly. The biggest danger in riding these long gravel roads is yourself. A bike will naturally want to stay upright and going in a straight line. When you hit deep gravel, the bike gets squirrely. When the surface changes, the feeling in the handlebars changes. When you hit gravel ridges, your handlebars get pulled side to side. It’s very easy to overcorrect and make things go badly. All you really have to do is stay on the throttle, let the bike do what it’ll do underneath you, and keep it pointed in the right direction. The bike will stay upright. You just have to fight the urge to overcorrect when things feel squirrely.

Making sure the river doesn’t run dry

Some softer road surface

 

[GravelRider]

We stopped in at Nouchimi Outfitters. It advertised a store, restaurant, motel, and gas. However, when we stopped in, the guy said they only do fuel. We were going to stop at Mirage about 30 miles or so down the road, so we opted to skip out on buying fuel here.

On a few more miles until Mirage

We arrived at Mirage at about 2 pm. It sits right next to a large river and reservoir.

Mirage is VERY nice and a lot larger than I expected. There is a small gift shop, some odds and ends, a hotel, their guide service, fuel, a bar, and a restaurant. The restaurant is cafeteria style. It is served three times a day during posted hours. However, we got there outside of the posted hours, and they were more than happy to make us up a plate. Lunch included a broccoli cream soup, turkey, mashed potatoes, green beans, and gravy, plus a soda. All for $22. Most of the food tasted like it came out of a can, so the price tag seemed a bit steep… But the food was hot, service was good, I was able to drink a cold beer with lunch. I had to step back and remember where I was, and all of a sudden, that price tag didn’t seem so bad.

My meal

After lunch, we fueled up. This was the long stretch of 380+ miles. We both filled up all of our fuel containers. This gave Neal 10 gallons and I had 13.5 gallons. We were basically fuel tankers at this point! This gave Neal a range of 500 miles, assuming he’s getting a very respectable 50 mpg, and me a range of 675 miles, assuming the same gas mileage. Given the remote nature of this road, we are going to figure out our actual range as we go. We are definitely going to the end of the Trans Taiga at Caniapiscau and back. However, we’d also like to explore the road south of Brisay. The maps show this to be about 50 miles long. However, satellite imagery seems to show about double that length. There is a float plane base at Caniapiscau called Air Saquenay that will sell travelers fuel. If that is open, then we definitely overpacked fuel and will have no problem getting all the way down the road south of Brisay and back. If it isn’t open, we will have to do some math and figure out how far we can actually go.

Distance since last fuel station

 

[GravelRider]

My bike

Neal’s bike

Here are some more pictures along the Trans Taiga between Mirage and Brisay.

Some Cree hunting cabins off to the left

We arrived at Brisay in the early evening. We explored the area for a bit.

 

[GravelRider]

We saw a fox that came trotting next to us. Didn’t give a damn that we were there. He walked right next to us, only a couple of feet from the bikes. He then sat down and stared us down for a bit before going on his way.

A cool lookout point