Eastern Snowboarding

Back From Mont Tremblant. What A Ride!

(Note: This is our last post before the first week of the New Year, as neither of us are around. As always, thanks for reading and happy holidays! We’ll be back to regular posting the first week of January.)

Ahhh. Well, we’ve returned from Mont Tremblant, the first big snowboarding trip of the season. And what a trip it was!

Thursday

The trip started late Thursday night, when we gathered in a Scarborough parking lot to board the buses that would take us to Tremblant. Scheduled arrival time: Friday morning. That meant eight hours on a bus, which isn’t easy when you have to grab some shut-eye as well. The ride sucked, as I wasn’t able to sleep more than 20 minutes at a time, but was otherwise uneventful.

Friday 7:20 a.m.

Our bus rolled into Tremblant, and we were immediately stoked. It was evident Tremblant was having a phenomenal December; there was snow everywhere, and lots of it. We dropped out gear at the hotel (Le Lodge De La Montagne), and got dressed. By 8:30 a.m., we were all lined up at the gondola, waiting for the mountain to open. We were tired, but were also extremely stoked. When visited Tremblant in 2006 around the same time, only a quarter of the mountain was open. Signs everywhere advised us that this trip would be different; 100 percent of the mountain was scheduled to open for the weekend.

We started by hitting some of the blue and black groomers on the south side, before moving on to the north side of the mountain. The north side has more difficult terrain, and is largely devoid of classes and instructors. This means you can ride faster and without interruption, which is difficult to accomplish on the north side.

There hadn’t been any new snow, but the untouched, groomed runs were still great.

Eventually we made our way over to the Soleil side, which features some nice groomed runs and several glades which still featured soft spots from last week’s snowstorm. I took things generally easy, wanting to ease back into things after my knee surgery. The knee held up great, I didn’t have any hamstring problems, and was generally able to bomb the runs. I stayed off booters, lips and jumps, though, and didn’t get anywhere near the terrain park.

We rode hard the whole day, amazed at our luck. The hill was empty, the conditions were phenomenal, and everyone was having a great time. We retired around 3:30 to Le Shack, followed by dinner, beer-fueled Hearts and sleep.

Saturday 8:45

While we thought it would be difficult to outdo Day One, the second day was definitely the best. We hit a few runs on the north side before deciding to head to The Edge, a section of the hill completely packed with glades. This area wasn’t open when I visited last year, so we were keen to check it out.

When we got to the Edge lift, it wasn’t open yet, so we joined the short lined that had formed. What we didn’t realize was that The Edge hadn’t been open in a freaking week, meaning it was full of untracked powder from the storm the week before! We became giddy with excitement, knowing in a short time we’d be shredding lines through untracked pow; in glades no less, my personal favourite.

After a brief argument with a dude who thought it was cool to cut in line and then had the balls to ask if we would let his friends skip ahead of us, we dropped in and started shredding. We cut our own lines for a good half of the day before things started to get tracked up. Hoots, hollers and cheers were the norm from everyone hitting the area. By the end of the morning, my arms were killing me from digging my ass out of pow. But it was so worth it. I never thought I’d get a powder day outside of Whistler.

In the afternoon, I thought I would hit a big-assed booter on the north side, which turned out to be a bad idea. I wiped out, and spun over and over and over down the hill after I crash-landed. I was concerned for my knee, but the brace held up. I vowed not to be that stupid again.

(It made me feel a bit better, though, that Steve and others in our entourage had nice wipeouts off the booter as well.)

Saturday night featured more beer, the Leafs game on TV, and a general sense of satisfaction knowing we’d killed it for two days and that Sunday would likely be cut short thanks to a rainy forecast.

Sunday

We only rode for two hours Sunday, as it started to rain big time around 11am. We bailed quickly and opted for brunch, beer and football in a warm location instead of getting our asses soaked in slushy snow on what became a very crowded hill.

Overall impressions

Although we didn’t ride much Sunday, we had a phenomenal trip. Tremblant has more glades than I thought, and a fair bit of fast, challenging terrain. While the hill isn’t the biggest compared to those in the west, it can certainly keep you busy for a couple of days. And although the village isn’t the biggest either, it’s got plenty of bars, restaurants and stores to keep everyone entertained until the wee hours of the morning.

A special shout out to the knee for holding up and staying relatively pain-free!

All in all, a phenomenal trip. I can’t wait for Whistler next month.

I’ve also updated our Mont Tremblant Guide. Check it out!

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