This is a 2 part examination of what we’re calling
the “Sunday Syndrome”.
Part 1) Identifying the phenomenon:
A common occurrence we report is the quiet Sunday
afternoons throughout the ski season and why we
think it happens, not always, but very frequently.
We believe the short answer is the priority attendee’s
attach to being early to be home to be ready for Monday.
Anecdotal Chair-Lift and Apres Ski interview research
over decades suggests that this is attributable to regional
driving commute times within 2 to 8 hours which is roughly
annotated in the map excerpt below where we have
scribed the red circle at the estimated outboard range
of +/-, 8 hours.
What ends up happening on many, but not all Sunday
afternoons is that there is less mountain ski/board
traffic than there is on some early Mon/Tues/Wed.
weekdays(Thurs/Fri. are different because they begin
to fill up with long weekender’s).
- T360.One.Day.8.Hour.Drive.Radius.a.jpg (1.15 MiB) Viewed 1501 times
Part 2) An Optional, Beneficial Alternative:
The irony of this was revealed early in our own 4 hour one way
commuting experience of decades ago(with small children going
to school), when we discovered that early departure was often
completely offset by very slow moving, sometimes stop-n-go urban
jams(Hello Ottawa, Hello Montreal...), to the point that we experimented
with staying ’til last run, have a meal on the way out, and get home
within a comparable time anyway because by then the highway traffic
was largely gone and very good, consistent speed was possible.
Additionally, if you eat before going, you don’t need to fight the
lineup crowds at highway en-route restaurants that just add to,
or cause huge additional delays.
It was our experience that we could have a whole, full afternoon
of fabulous skiing without hardly any crowds or lift lines and
the net difference in time to get home was often less than 90
minutes, an excellent tradeoff considering the whole purpose
of the trip is “skiing”. An additional benefit when traveling with
small kids was that if you fed them before departure, by the
time you were 50 kilometres down the road after the meal, they
were often asleep and the trip home was both swift and quiet.
Summary:
If you’re a serious Alpine Snow Sports fan or family, consider
letting the Rat Race go by you, ski all Sunday afternoon and
go home after the mad rush. If you read all the Sunday’s
in our daily journal you’ll see just how often we describe
afternoons can be like “Private Club Days” where up on the
trails, you’ll often feel like you might be the only one there.
It’s a good thing we’re small and don’t have a lot of readers,
so just don’t spoil the whole thing by telling too many others...
We put this in our “Tremblant Geographic” section because
it is an example of how you may have the benefit of a whole
afternoon of very sweet skiing because of the way regional
geography and transit logistics can influence attendance
patterns at Tremblant.
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