Mont-Royal is the one hill the whole city leans on — these are the paths that stay quiet, even on a Saturday.
Every Montrealer has a relationship with the mountain. It's the green smudge you orient by, the place you're sent to walk off a winter, the reason the downtown towers stop where they do. Most people climb it the same two ways — up the stairs from the east, or along the wide road to the chalet.
These four are the other ways: a switchbacking carriage path, a belt road that rings the summit, a singletrack along the south cliff, and a quiet line down the western slope. None of them takes more than an hour. Tap any one to open it in Foray if you've got the app, or just read it as a map.
The gentlest way up — a switchbacking carriage path that trades steepness for length, doubling back on itself through the trees below the lookout. Wide enough to walk two abreast, soft underfoot, and never crowded the way the main staircase gets.
The belt road that contours around the upper mountain instead of climbing it — flat, gravelled, and shaded most of the day. Good for the kind of walk where you want to talk more than you want to breathe hard.
A narrow dirt path that runs along the top of the southern cliff, where the mountain drops toward downtown. Roots and loose rock in places — wear something with a grip — but the trade is the quietest stretch of forest this close to the towers.
The old ski-hill slope on the Outremont side, now a walking line through open hardwood. Steeper than it looks on the map, and almost always empty — most people never cross to this flank of the mountain.
Trail data sketched from public OpenStreetMap traces. The polylines on this page approximate the actual routes — your Foray app will resolve precise geometry when you tap into a trail. Got a correction? sundaylabs.app@gmail.com.