Robert Matzinger's Cycling Trans-Labrador
Highway Pages
Robert Matzinger's Cycling Trans-Labrador
Highway Pages
This is what you can find on this page:
Note that every information on this page is just my (and my wife's) experience and opinion, so it's definitely subjective. Note that we did this journey in 1996, so things may have changed. Despite the fact that we try to give honest and reliable information, we cannot take any responsibility for it. However we did go there and we did cycle the TLH by ourselves, so almost everything we are telling on this page is authentic, seen by our own eyes.
To be exact, one should speak of the Northern Quebec route 389 (on Quebec territory) plus the actual Trans-Labrador Highway in Labrador. However sloppily people outside Quebec just call the whole thing TLH. See the map page for details.
Please consider the following:
Cycling the Trans-Labrador Highway is an expedition-like
and serious outing!!!
So this is definitely no tour for newbies. You have to
face serious remoteness with often hundreds of km's of no settlement or
supply. When we started, it wasn't so clear to us that this road can be
cycled at all (despite one report of a guy who did it). Let me just cite
some emails we got when asking around for info about the TLH. Consider
they are NOT untrue:
After the first 25 miles from Labrador City, Route 389 in Quebec is awful. We almost turned around and put our motorhome on the train, but we didn't.
A bicycle tour over the Labrador highway would be very horrible. It is very poor gravel and stone highway for hundreds of kilometers with no towns or people living between the small towns you see on the map. ... Don't expect every dot on the map to actually be a town.
I hope that by "cycling" you mean a motorcycle. Because if you mean a bicycle, I think it would be a hell of a ride (in the literal sense of the word). ...
Of course I do not know your taste for adventure, endurance, experience in the art of survival, encounters with bears,... Quite regularly we have search parties of volunteers going into the bush to try to find people who went for a little walk. Canada is a great place to get lost.
Well we decided to go anyway, but there ARE some dangers and risks you have to face, which can be reduced (but not totally avoided) by experience and good preparation. Consider that we brought about 15 years of experience with cycling/traveling (see e.g. our Cycling Karakoram-Highway Homepage) and we can also say that we are experienced alpinists/climbers. We highly recommend to bring PLENTY of experience with you, your partners, your equipment and your bike for this tour.
We needed five weeks to cycle from Quebec City over Labrador City to St. Johns. However we greatly underestimated the difficulties of this route and the time we would need for cycling. We are very clear that much of the hardship we encountered came from a too tight time plan (just read the diary). I would recommend to plan 7-8 weeks for the whole route, so you don't have to make overlong per-day distances. You can sit out a bad weather day or have a rest day and you have more time for side steps and visits (or going fishing, which we deeply regret we missed). On the other hand if you go much slower, this journey may get depressing monotonous.
However we don't want to be seen as kind of heroes or so. A lot of healthy people would be able to do this tour, given the will and some experience. It is very clear to us that other adventurers did much harder things than we did, like e.g. the pioneers that explored this land which we deeply admire. This tour was just OUR humble challenge. And there are people in the world doing a lot tougher stuff than we do. But this is what it's all about: to find the right-sized challenge for oneself.
Maybe the most debated piece of information before we started. You can now read in detail what we have found. I also mention fuel (i.e. gasoline for the cars), despite this is the only thing a cyclist needn't worry about. However keep in mind that we did the route in 1996, so things may have changed. Distances from our bikes tachometer may be slightly inaccurate, because on gravel you cycle zig-zag a lot. This may still be the most accurate information on the web. And even at the Baie Comeau tourist info they didn't know that much:
Quebec to Baie-Comeau - 504 km; Lots of settlements, supply, tourist infos, etc. Where there's a separate freeway, the southern shore of St. Laurent River is very nice to cycle.
Baie-Comeau to Labrador City - 570 km:
Labrador City to Goose Bay - 560 km:
In general the whole road from Maniq V to Goose Bay (and in particular not from Churchill Falls to Goose Bay) cannot be recommended for an ordinary car. People are still doing it with ordinary cars, but we saw several of them having got seriously damaged. A 4 WD vehicle is therefore recommended.
In Newfoundland: Lewisporte to St. Johns with some minor sidesteps - 505km.
Statistics:All in all we cycled about 2100 km on this journey.
In general this route is not as dangerous as it may seem. At the northern shore of St. Laurent River traffic is very heavy and unpleasant to cycle. On route 389 traffic decreases a lot and after Maniq V it gets down to not more than a car per hour or less. However on the whole route you can expect to visit one or two cars/trucks per day at least, so someone should be able to organize help for you in case of emergency (but this may take a while still).
It's said that no Grizzlies exist in Labrador and Northern Quebec, only black bears which are much more shy. Normally they fear humans, but we were told that in seldom cases the old bears can get dangerous. Watch out for a white nose! We strictly did not cook in our tent and strictly kept every food outside, hanging it up in the trees if possible (often we didn't find any big enough trees however).
Beside that there exist wolfes (we sometimes heard them and once saw one, but they're very shy) and it is said there are caribous, elks, etc., but we saw none of them.
This is the most annoying problem, however. They're everywhere. Myriads of them. And they seem to eat the common repellents for breakfast (the repellent we had was able to erode plastics/synthetics!). There's no problem if you cycle, even not when you go uphill (only when we were going uphill very very slow and it was warm and humid, the black flies byte us when cycling), but as soon as you stop a cloud of black flies gathers around you, biting every piece of uncovered skin and leaving itchy bumps (see the pictures in the picture gallery). Around the tent, existence without a headnet is impossible. A strong repellent helps a bit on the hands, but don't expect too much. We were warned about that, just read some pieces of email I got:
Mosquitoes are so bad that in Churchill Falls the kids don't even play outside and those that work outdoors wear nets over their heads. Welts are very itchy and get bigger by the day. This will be your biggest problem and is a serious one. Bug repellent seems to be useless. When we stopped, even in wide open areas, mosquitoes were all over our screens within seconds.
The insects are claimed to be the reason there has been so little human habitation of Labrador in the past. I would suggest getting either a head-net, or something called a bug-shirt or bug-jacket, which fits tight at the waist and wrists and has a hood made of insect netting. Chemical repellents are also available, but some people are sensitive to them and they don't work for very long. On the other hand, insects might help make your trip go faster -- since you will go as fast as you can to run away from them. :-)
Be prepared for that, we warned you! However after the first hysteric outbursts, you get used to the black fly plague and the landscape looks just as nice through the headnet. Just eating always remains difficult (which you should do outside the tent, because of the bears).
Can reach from 35 degrees Celsius (near Quebec City) to around zero degrees Celsius on cold Labrador September mornings. For us it was also raining a lot (especially in September). So expect to cycle considerable distances in the rain. Consider that on most of the route you will not find a house to get out the rain and dry your equipment for days, so packing waterproof is essential!
This is no major concern on this journey. Medical standards in Canada are excellent and there are no dangerous diseases for which special vaccinations would be required. Just the usual Tetanus, etc. As rescue actions can get quite expensive, an appropriate insurance is recommended.
A word on water: Water is said to be excellent in Northern Quebec and Labrador. We drank water from flowing rivers frequently. We still carried a filter and used it if taking water from lakes or near settlements. Still consider the following email I got before the journey:
In much of north-western Canada, streams and lakes are contaminated with a parasite called giardia (also called "Beaver Fever"), which affects the digestive system. I assume that Labrador would have it as well. I knew a man who got this on a camping trip, and I would very much recommend filtering or treating any water you drink (he had diarrhoea for three months).
Hopefully this problem will not find its way to Labrador, but watch out and ask the locals.
I will definitely not write a lot about equipment, because people who are unsure about what to take with them should be advised not to try the TLH at all. However, here are some hints.
You may have seen our bikes on the title page or in the picture gallery. You definitely need a good, reliable bike. This needn't be a mountain bike, actually I don't like mountain bikes for traveling at all.
We use our now 15 year old traveling bikes which already survived several tours all over Europe and to Asia (see our Cycling Karakoram-Highway Homepage). The bikes and all the rest of the equipment were gradually enhanced during these years. For the TLH I took again a lot of time and money to service the bikes and get them in shape. We finally had features like a third brake (very fine for the long downhills and no need to carry any spare parts for the breaks anymore), a frame enforcement (which was inserted 6 years earlier into my bike to get rid of frame vibrations at high speeds), self-made paniers of extra size (reasonably old, but in good shape), the strongest 32-622-wheels we could get a hand on, etc. for our disposal.
Most important, I really know every screw and every minor part of those two bikes. So I know what they can take and how they can be repaired. I always took care for compatibility with the most simple and cheap cycle spare parts (I would call our bikes low-tech) when buying parts. And indeed if a shop has just any basic spare parts, they would work for this simple technology (still we carried 3.5 kg of repair tools and spare parts). You will be in trouble, if one of these ultimate doing-everything-alone high-tech bike-parts fails some hundred km's away of the next major town.
That's why - in any case - I definitely recommend not to go with a brand new bike. Every new bike (even the most expensive one) has weaknesses you have to find out. Know your bike in every detail, before you go!
As we carried everything ourselves, including tent, sleeping bags, clothing, foto equipment, a good set of spare parts, etc. as well as food supply for up to two weeks, we went quite loaded. We had about 30 kg of package on our bikes, depending on how many food we were forced to carry. This sums up with the bike to a good 45kg per person.
See "Climate". Is there more to say?
Will be added on request.
We always thought Canada is a bilingual country. THIS IS NOT THE CASE! English is virtually not understood in the French-speaking parts of Canada (i.e Quebec) and vice-versa (we even found a tourist info bureau in Quebec, where no word of English was spoken). This is even the case for Fermont and Labrador City, which are at virtually one point (only 22km apart) separated from the rest of the world by at least 600 km of wilderness. We never found an answer to the question why the average Canadian is unable to learn a second language (in Switzerland they have four languages and everyone speaks at least three of them). However you shouldn't go without at least some basic phrases of both languages.
The ferry from Goose Bay to Lewisporte sails twice a week. See the related links. With a car, a reservation is mandatory, especially during the summer months. With only a bike you will most probably always find a place on the ferry.
There are plenty of helpful tourist info bureaus along both shores of St. Laurent River, including one in Baie Comeau. However they don't know much about route 389 and TLH (e.g. they did know that it is xxx km to Fire Lake, but they didn't know what "Fire Lake" is and whether there are people and supply). The next tourist info is in Labrador City. I don't know whether there is one in Goose Bay. In Newfoundland there are again plenty, but many of them were closed in September.
We always wondered why Gagnon was so carefully eliminated and we heard different and contradicting theories about this (as I don't want to start a political debate, I don't want to publish these theories on the net). Can anyone help us out with the truth about Gagnon?
We asked many people whether there were any cyclists seen on TLH before us. Most people answered with no, but I know for sure about one guy who cycled the route before the road was fully established (which was in 1992; you had to go by train for a stretch before that). At crucial spots like Churchill Falls' only hotel, they dimely remembered only one couple of cyclists before us. So it seems that we are among the first ones who fully cycled this route. Does anyone know of other people having cycled this road?
We did the whole TLH 1996 on the bicycles and, while more strenuous than expected, we found it to be a very impressive and unforgetable journey. Despite some serious warnings, we dared to try this route and although we don't want to do it again soon, we are quite proud and happy we could conclude this tour. So if you feel the urge to do alike, plan VERY carefully and go for it, you will not regret it. (And drop me a mail if you did it.)
Happy Cycling! - Robert and Veronika Matzinger