Having finally cleared Lake Nipissing, Around The World piles on relentlessly eastwards on this gentle left hander that slips past the southern shores of both Trout Lake and Lake Talon en route to the Samuel de Champlain Provincial Park. The park itself won’t feature until stage 684 but the hard work of getting there is done on this stage. It’s a tough, uncompromising stage, which although billed as a descender on paper, will feel like nothing of the sort. This stage is a real test, especially towards the end.
The rollout is south east and flat to Corbeil Corners at three miles where there’s a short rise as Highway 17 crosses the junction that leads to Trout Lake in the north and Corbeil in the south. The road then rises gently to eight miles, crossing several small streams and threading its way between small lakes to Pyramid Paintball Park where the road climbs steeply for a mile to the highest elevation of the stage at nine miles.
The highway then descends as quickly as it climbed, but in two stages, crossing the Kaibuskong River on the way to the junction of Highway 531 which heads south to Bonfield on the north eastern shore of Nosbonsing. The next six miles are then lumpy up and down with basically no flat road on offer. The road passes south of Barse Lake, Froggy Lake, La Chapelle Lake and the Mattawa River on the way to the start of the longest descent of the stage at eighteen miles. It takes the road down over two hundred feet to the Pimisi Rest Area at the Mattawa River where it spreads south to the roadside. The rest area is also the lowest elevation of the stage by a long way.
The bad news however, is that having lost all of that elevation, the highway puts it all back on in the two miles to twenty one miles where the Trans-Canadian Highway slices its way between small lakes north and south of the road. The finish of the stage is below the furthest east of the bunch approaching the junction with Highway 630 and offers some late respite in the form of a one mile descent to the line.
Distance: 22 miles / 35 kilometres
Ascent: 1004 feet / 306 metres
RGT Magic Road: Kieb0ARr4FMG
Max elevation: 879 ft
Min elevation: 575 ft
Total climbing: 1002 ft
Total descent: -1056 ft
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