• Parking Stationnement du Centre plein air Mont Kanasuta 48°10'31.4"N
  79°24'07.7"W

Access Rights

   Free, no reception infrastructure.

   Pets are allowed.

Directions to the starting point

From Rouyn-Noranda, take Route 117 North. After about twenty kilometres, turn right to stay on 117 North (signs for Kirkland Lake). Turn right onto the Mount Kanasuta path and continue to the mountain.

Parking (large): Free, open year-round.         

Position : 48°25'06,3"N | 77°46'33,6"O  

Address : 376 Mont Kanasuta Road, Rouyn-Noranda

View the route from your location on Google Map

Beaconing

Orange ribbons hanging from a few branches or girding a trunk at good height along the edge of the track and some signs.

Contact

376 Mont Kanasuta Road | Rouyn-Noranda, Quebec T 819 279-2333 

Email : info@kanasuta.com

View the Website

• Some good gradients.

History

Historically, the Mount Kanasuta area has had different spiritual meanings for the Algonquins in the region. On a summer day in the year of Grace 1884, while a small wind from the northwest was cooling this day that was announcing itself as candlelight, the Oblate missionary: Father Paradis, sitting comfortably in a canoe up the lake Opasatica, Asked Okoushin, his faithful Algonquin guide, named after two twin mountains whose singular cut cut strangely on the horizon; "Kamasuta Kamatwesing, the place where you hear a sound," was the answer. The place where Machi manitoo is swinging," said a Mississagué Ojibwe. The place where the spirits dance" rebelled a third. In short it emerged from this exciting toponymy debate that the place was sacred and that since many moons future shamans were enthroned at the top of what was to become in English mapping; "the swinging hills". In addition to these Indian legends, Father Paradis brought back from his expedition a delicious watercolor from the Kanasuta Mountains and a repellent with an evocative name of "maringouinfuge" whose disturbing composition: lard, liquid tar and all the same lemongrass,f it is totally restrictive in terms of marketing.

Two centuries earlier, crossing the portage of the watershed at the foot of the Kanasuta Mountains, the Knight of Troyes with his commando of 100 strong men determined to push the English out of his counters in James Bay, would certainly have appreciated the dissuasive effects of the anti-mosquito spray.

Towards the end of the XIX century, an exploitation of natural resources worthy of the name was established in the vicinity of the 2 mountains. It was first the forest cuts prefiguring "The Boreal Error" of Richard Desjardins, then came the mining activity. They are still being practiced. As for the massif itself, it was not really used until the 1960s, with the creation of a ski centre on the slopes of K1.

Flora

The Kanasuta area, a long-time resource-rich area, has become a symbol of local environmentalists' struggle against clear-cutting. It is precisely this small mountain - Mount Kanasuta - that gave its title to the most recent album of the fervent Richard Desjardins. Certainly, in terms of forests, the site cannot be considered exceptional, except for a small stand of "large-toothed" poplars, a very rare species at this latitude, awaiting an official designation of "Exceptional Forest Ecosystem" (EFE).