Season Diary - Day 15

Henry

Jan 182 min read

Saturday 18 January, 2025

How do you, or can you, understand a resort like Tremblant? Disneyland on Snow? Or something more?

There’s a huge dichotomy I’ve come to understand about Tremblant, and it’s one I’m really struggling to reconcile.

On the one hand, I’ve seen first hand that this is “Disneyland on snow” for a huge number of people. I was genuinely surprised to see an incredible number of families with children of all ages running and skiing around this weekend. For every adult in the hot tub ordering an Aperol via their poolside bar service, there was a child ordering a hot chocolate. The queue for ski valet first thing in the morning was two-thirds children.

And the whole resort is build to imitate what a ski resort should look like, literally; when the resort base was rebuilt in the 1990s, at a time when Tremblant decided to re-orientate itself to the outside world and become a world-renowned ski destination, it was rebuilt to look like what a traditional Quebec village.

Now, I love this place, and the people that work here, and I really don’t want to offend any Quebecois, but it all looks a bit .. fake. Like someone created a theme park ride inspired by Quebec and skiing, but exaggerated to sell a certain idea.

I spent time in more bars over the past few days than I did during my entire season here. I watched ice hockey every night of the week, and enjoy superb beer brewed behind my back in the microbrewery we enjoyed, or just down the road in Montreal or Quebec City.

Dare I say it, I even got my boogie on in the Caribou bar, where I did spend all my season when not skiing. I enjoyed cocktails at a fancy cocktail bar that couldn’t quite hide the dancing cages that came out when the tables were put away after food service ended.

The resort was busy and bustling, full of people from Montreal and Ottawa, New York and Boston, enjoying their ski holiday – even if it was just a weekend – by sharing a few drinks, and a dance, or watching the game at the bar.

But I think therein lies the beauty of this place. Perhaps it is Disneyland on Snow, but if, as an industry, we’re worried about uptake of snowsports, surely having somewhere like this where anyone can come and ski (and trust me, not to judge but “anyone” really was out in force this weekend), and, critically, have an amazing time, at whatever age, is awesome.

Perhaps it is the perfect place for a friends' weekend away, leaving the wives and girlfriends, husbands and boyfriends back home and dancing late into the night after a few beers or cocktails. Jetlag had me slammed in bed by 10pm each night, but the empty faces around the breakfast buffet each morning was testament to the shapes thrown on the bar at the Caribou the night before.

So what? The skiing is great here, it really is, punching far about the limited 82km available. It’s a bustling town full of children and families, friends and couples, here, simply to enjoy themselves. So what?

Yeah, that’ll do it.

Cheers to that; santé.