We pulled into Mont Tremblant on the 23rd to some light snowfall. After driving all day through torrential rains, passing Killington, Stowe, and 45 deg F weather, we had just a glimmer of hope that the "Great White North" might have stayed cold enough to escape the liquidy annhilation.
Our hopes were quickly dashed when the innkeeper told us it rained hard from 10am to 7pm.... then the temps took a nose dive. When we woke for breakfast the next morning, other guests told us it was -25deg, holy SHIT! Oh wait.... Celcius. With the temps never breaking 5deg F, it was definitely cold enough for the water logged snow to freeze into some real hard stuff.
Dec 24 Mont-Tremblant only had 3 trails, and no expert ones, open from the summit. They were warning guests when purchasing tickets, but were not discounting. (Here pay some more extra holiday season taxes while you're at it too.) The groomers had done a decent job of breaking things up. There were three conditions of trails: groomed to meatball sized loose granular, not groomed too much with a thin layer of shaved powder over hard hard hard pack, and didn't groom it and closed. There were trails that were groomed to meatballs or larger death cookies but not opened. Some of these trails were actually not that bad, but were still closed, so we opted for some creative traversing to avoid the wrath of the ski "marshals" and get on some steeper "closed" terrain. They were making snow like crazy. Our opinion is that Mont Tremblant was just a bit wussie-with-a-p for not opening up more terrain, there was plenty of snow. But evidently it just too hard to fit both french and english on a warning sign... much easier to just rope it off.
The large loose gradular had no cohesion and was a bit tricky to hold high speed carves on... can we say drifting sideways while getting a lower leg massage? The less groomed, but smooth stuff was absolutely amazing for some high speed turns.
Dec 25 same conditions as the day before. They opened more trails, but those that had been skied on before had smaller granular crystals while the newly opened terrain was meatball sized. No doubt as it get skied and smashed more it'll be sweet with a smooth firm base.
Other than being flipping cold, not a bad place to spend a little R+R time over the holiday.
Our hopes were quickly dashed when the innkeeper told us it rained hard from 10am to 7pm.... then the temps took a nose dive. When we woke for breakfast the next morning, other guests told us it was -25deg, holy SHIT! Oh wait.... Celcius. With the temps never breaking 5deg F, it was definitely cold enough for the water logged snow to freeze into some real hard stuff.
Dec 24 Mont-Tremblant only had 3 trails, and no expert ones, open from the summit. They were warning guests when purchasing tickets, but were not discounting. (Here pay some more extra holiday season taxes while you're at it too.) The groomers had done a decent job of breaking things up. There were three conditions of trails: groomed to meatball sized loose granular, not groomed too much with a thin layer of shaved powder over hard hard hard pack, and didn't groom it and closed. There were trails that were groomed to meatballs or larger death cookies but not opened. Some of these trails were actually not that bad, but were still closed, so we opted for some creative traversing to avoid the wrath of the ski "marshals" and get on some steeper "closed" terrain. They were making snow like crazy. Our opinion is that Mont Tremblant was just a bit wussie-with-a-p for not opening up more terrain, there was plenty of snow. But evidently it just too hard to fit both french and english on a warning sign... much easier to just rope it off.
The large loose gradular had no cohesion and was a bit tricky to hold high speed carves on... can we say drifting sideways while getting a lower leg massage? The less groomed, but smooth stuff was absolutely amazing for some high speed turns.
Dec 25 same conditions as the day before. They opened more trails, but those that had been skied on before had smaller granular crystals while the newly opened terrain was meatball sized. No doubt as it get skied and smashed more it'll be sweet with a smooth firm base.
Other than being flipping cold, not a bad place to spend a little R+R time over the holiday.
open, sometimes blowing fiercely on the South, only the slower Lowell Thomas triple open on the North. . . And there was one patch of ice "meatballs" near the bottom of McCulloch and Taschereau. The first time, I was already blasting when I hit it, and I was flying when I was through it! It didn't help that I had a "Western" (Whistler) tune-up. 