Plan a Quad Trip in Gaspésie

With over 2600 km of ATV trails, Gaspésie is a must-see destination for quad biking! The region offers spectacular landscapes of sea, rivers and mountains that you will never forget.

Thanks to the Trans-Québec trail, you can ride around the entire Gaspé Peninsula on your ATV. The region offers all types of trails, from wide and dusty forest roads (which are easy to ride and offer excellent visibility) to narrower and more technical trails through the forest or through muddy terrain with lots of puddles! About 1500 km long, the Gaspésie segment of the Trans-Québec trail also takes you to places that are otherwise inaccessible.

Enjoy the Chic-Choc Mountains, spectacular views of the St. Lawrence River and Percé Rock from another angle! The trails also takes you through several towns and villages, where you can refuel, sample local cuisine and find accommodations. It will take you about a week to complete the entire tour.

Quadding in the Valley. Photo: CHOK Images

Home to the highest concentration of moose per square kilometre in Québec, the Matane Wildlife Reserve covers an area of 1275 km². This wildlife reserve is bisected north-south by trail #807, which will take you by Étang à la Truite, a beautiful pond at the heart of the Chic-Choc Mountains.

North of the wildlife reserve (and about 20 km south of Cap-Chat), in the heart of the mountains, the magnificent tourist resort of Village Grande Nature Chic-Chocs offers ATV rentals. You can also go on a guided excursion for the day or a guided quad bike tour of the Gaspé Peninsula. On site you will find a restaurant, several lodging options (a lodge, Canadian and Scandinavian cabins and campsites), as well as a wide range of outdoor activities in spectacular landscapes. Some of the cabins even have their own outdoor hot tubs!

In the coastal community of Cap-Chat, you can admire an impressive wind farm, which includes the tallest vertical-axis wind turbine in the world! Continuing eastward, you can observe the beautiful La Martre Lighthouse, a wooden structure built in 1906. Painted red (with a single white stripe on the seaward side), the lighthouse has an octagonal base and is 19 m high.

In Mont-Saint-Pierre, quad biking trails provide access to places that cannot be reached by road. Rather than just enjoying the view from the foot of the mountains, you can access their summits and admire superb panoramic views of the Gulf of St. Lawrence on one side and the Chic-Chocs on the other. Summer is a great time of year to enjoy these sights, but so is the fall, when the leaves change colour.

Quadding in Mont-Saint-Pierre. Photo: Jean-Sébastien Cloutier

The village of Percé is accessible by quad bike on the trail maintained by the local ATV club. However, for safety reasons, it is prohibited to ride an ATV in the heart of the village as well as on all of the area’s hiking trails, including the Mount Sainte-Anne and Grotto trails. Plan for gas accordingly. Three lodging establishments on Route 132 (Hôtel-Motel Fleur de Lys, Motel Le Macareux and Riôtel Percé) allow you to park your vehicle on their grounds and walk into the village. We recommend that you make reservations in advance and specify that you are travelling by ATV.

For those who are interested in shorter excursions, La Matapédia, which is recognized throughout the province for the quality of its trails, is a destination of choice. This area offers over 690 km of ATV trails, forest roads and rural routes that allow you to go on loop rides for the day. To promote this area to tourists, the Matapédia ATV club has clearly marked this network of trails as well as built observation towers, lookouts and footbridges that provide access to breathtaking scenery.

The ATV club has also developed a bilingual mobile app called “Club VTT de la Matapédia.” Once downloaded, you can use it without data or WiFi to locate restaurants and bars, gas stations, lodging establishments, ATV shops and services, ambulance points, attractions, etc. Photos and descriptions are available for each attraction and sometimes even video and audio clips.

Quadding in the Valley. Photo: CHOK Images

• To purchase an ATV trail pass, please contact the Québec Quad Federation (FQCQ).
• Check the trail closures during the hunting periods in fall in zecs and wildlife reserves. More information (in French only).
• Guided quad excursions: Authentique Gaspésie

With all this information, you are now ready to discover Gaspésie by quad.

See also: 

• Attractions in the Matapédia Valley to Discover by Quad