Tues, Dec 28th: Fantastic weather, perfect in my mind. The summit was still a bit cold and windy, but at about -15 I would say it was ideal. The sun was shining and we were starting to explore a bit more of the mountain and some blue runs. Found out that vanier and the rest of that run (duncan bas?) was a bit too steep for my liking! Really liked Desseres on the south side and loved hitting that little jump right at the switchback of Roy Foss (i think that's the name
). What I don't like? The friggin' flat parts all over the south side! The one halfway up the mountain just after Mi Chemin is aggravating and impossible for snowboarders, I didn't see a single one make that without having to unstrap. Wonder what could be done there to fix that part...it's like a parking lot
Nansen lower was too slow in my opinion as well and we all avoided that run after the first time. Still no Duncan at this point so we were dealing with big crowds on the north side but making the best of the excellent weather. Wed, Dec 29th: Last day on the hill and we heard Duncan was supposed to be open, so we were PUMPED! Unfortunately we got there and realized it was not opening until noon! There were a million people all standing around on the bottom of the north wondering the same thing we were, "when's this thing opening?". We blasted off a few runs on the north and went back to the south for some lunch, hoping to return to Duncan open, and success! We only got one ride up Duncan after all, but it was memorable: by this time in the day the fog was so heavy on that side of the hill (and summit), that we could barely see. At one point in the ride up we could not even see the chair in front of us nor any of the trees to the sides! It was so nice to avoid the huge crowds that had been the norm at Expo and LT by that point and made our way to Edge for the first time. We desperately wanted to try out the glade runs by the time we left, and we figured we could handle Action to get down to them....WEEEEEEE that was fun haha! There were 3 foot tall powdery moguls at the top of Action that were extremely difficult to navigate on our boards, but we managed to get down alive (barely haha) and had some of the most fun at Tremblant yet by ripping through the right glade run (the not as steep one). I managed to take (and land!) about 3 jumps in there and not hit any trees so I was very excited. It really showed our progression as riders in the short period of time we spent at Tremblant. When we got there there was no way we could have even thought about getting into the glades a couple of days earlier, let alone taking jumps. If Tremblant could somehow find a way to give me access to that glade run without having to navigate Action down...it would be pure heaven. It would be great if they eventually snaked a blue run around one of the sides to even out the incline, I would literally spend all day there if I could. I see the soleil is open tomorrow, just missed it! I guess we'll have to check that one out next time, who knows.
Personally, my riding has gone up exponentially since I got to tremblant, it was actually very cool to experience it, and I owe most to petit bonheur, what an amazing run, along with Latendre. It was a nice challenge to try to match up one carve per turn of Latendre. Trying to hold huge 100 foot toeside turns followed by 100 foot heelside turns, etc was excellent practice. More good practice was simply avoiding the huge crowds on the top of Crete & petit bonheur especially, they were like schools of fish in my way (or the dreaded ski school "snake")! I used to be tentative trying to navigate my way through people like that, but now I'm an old pro, it's all about the timing. This will come very much in handy the next time at Blue Mountain, haha!
We found that getting to the south side early in the morning allowed us to get a great spot at the P1 parking and thus allow us to brown bag our lunch every day instead of eating out. Saved us a lot of money. Twice we just left our lunches in the chalet on the shelves upstairs and no one grabbed them or anything, so that was nice.
I also loved taking my last run of Tremblant: Voyageur. A fun way to end our time at the hill, if you don't count my original poutine from Smokie's Poutinerie as well
I would be happy to answer any questions anyone might have, please feel free. As an all snowboarder group we might have insight that skiers might miss.
