Shake the winter blues on these skate trails near Ottawa!

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Bored with skating in circles at your local rink? Now you can skate through the forest instead, on one of a growing number of groomed skate trails.

The ice trails craze started a few years ago and is still going strong. I first read about one in 2016—Domaine de la Forêt Perdue, north of Trois-Rivières (see the video below).

These days, there are several skate trails near Ottawa where you can glide through the trees.

In York’s Corners (between Metcalfe and Russell), the River Oak Estates ice trail is popular with families, dog lovers and hockey players, as strollers, sleds, toboggans, hockey sticks, pucks and pooches are all allowed on the ice. You can also rent skates, helmets and other gear, if you don’t bring your own. Some of the skating trails are illuminated at night.

In 2017, CBC Radio wrote about the 3-kilometre Lac-des-Loups skate trail in Lac-des-Loups, Quebec, just beyond the northwestern edge of Gatineau Park. That one has been a visitor magnet since it opened a year ago. Click on the link below to hear Hallie Cotnam’s entertaining 2017 interview with trail creator Dave Mayer. (I tried the trail one morning when it was -26C and, honestly, once I got going, the cold wasn’t so bad. And the ice was like a sheet of glass.)

Here are a few more nearby ice trails to check out (a big thank you to the readers who alerted me to several of these).

• There’s a three-kilometre skate trail at Countryside Adventures in Moose Creek, partway between Ottawa and Cornwall. The site also offers a tubing hill, snowshoeing trails, a petting zoo and a food truck.
• The Little Penguin Trail is a five-kilometre ice trail that wends through the Touraine Golf Club in Gatineau.
• Icelynd Skating Trails is a two-kilometre route off Fernbank Road near Stittsville. Along with trails, there’s an outdoor rink, and you can warm up around one of the bonfires.
• In the La Pêche sector of Wakefield, you can explore two to five kilometres (length depends on weather conditions) of the frozen water mazes at Eco-Odyssée Nature Park. (On certain nights, one kilometre of the route is illuminated.)

• In Pembroke, a two-kilometre snowshoeing trail parallels the 1.5-kilometre wooded Laurentian Valley Skating Trail. The trail is usually illuminated a couple of nights a week.
• If you’re up for a longer road trip from Ottawa, the Deep River Skate Trail is a forested ice trail.

Further afield, if you’re heading to Muskoka, you can check out the 1.3-kilometre ice skate trail at Arrowhead Provincial Park or one of three other ice trails in the region.

If you visit one of these skating trails (or find another one I haven’t mentioned), come back here, leave a comment and let me know what it was like!

Updated on January 8, 2023.

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As the owner of Ottawa Road Trips, I acknowledge that I live on, work in and travel through the unceded, unsurrendered territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabeg Nation. I am grateful to have the opportunity to be present on this land. Ottawa Road Trips supports Water First, a non-profit organization that helps address water challenges in Indigenous communities in Canada through education, training and meaningful collaboration.

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