About

Who writes these reports, and how

Last updated: 2026-09-18

Wintertrack publishes field reports for snowshoe routes in the northeast: the Laurentides north of Montreal, the Adirondack High Peaks, the White Mountains, Gatineau Park and Algonquin Provincial Park. Every report covers one route, in both English and Chinese, and every report carries the same six things: how to get to the trailhead, what the route actually does, what to carry, what can go wrong, the questions people ask before their first attempt, and the steps for travelling the line.

How a report is put together

Each report is written from recorded trip data rather than from a route description copied out of a guidebook. The figures that appear in the data bar — distance, elevation gain, duration, measured base snow depth — are the numbers our own parties recorded on the dates given in the report. Snow depth is a reading from a marked stake at a stated kilometre mark, not an estimate for the whole route, and the reports say which stake it came from. Where a route has more than one character — a sheltered valley and an exposed ridge in the same 7 km — the route section is split by kilometre so you can see where the terrain changes.

Reports are reviewed once a season. A report is not rewritten when conditions change; instead we publish a new report for the same sector when the route changes materially, and the older one is marked with its original date so you can see how old the observation is.

What these reports are not

They are not a substitute for a forecast, a map, or your own judgement on the day. Snowpack, ice thickness, road access and gate hours change within hours. A route that was straightforward on the date in the report can be a different proposition a week later. Read the report as a description of one specific day, then make your own decision using the current forecast and what you can see in front of you.

The sectors

• Laurentides — the shield country north of Montreal, roughly 300-900 m, with the deepest and most reliable base in the guide.
• Adirondack High Peaks — New York's protected forest preserve; unplowed access and a continental, faceted snowpack.
• White Mountains — the windiest and most avalanche-exposed of the five, with treeline at about 1,200 m.
• Gatineau Park — a federal park in the Ottawa commuter belt; the shortest approaches and the most grooming.
• Algonquin Park — Ontario's interior park, where a plowed highway is the only real access and everything beyond it is backcountry.

Corrections

If a report is wrong — a gate that no longer exists, a bridge that has been removed, a distance that does not match the ground — write to [email protected] and say which report and which line. Corrections are applied to the report and noted in the file's change history. Trail conditions that have changed since publication are worth reporting too, and we will add a dated note rather than silently editing the original observation.