Trip to Mont Tremblant - 3 days

In this post, I will share what happened during 3-days trip to Mont Tremblant. For this trip, there were my two friends' families joined the trip as well.

D-1 day

The day before I travelled, I called the hotel (Ermitage Du Lac) and asked if early check-in was available. I was told that the early check-in could not be confirmed over the phone call during this time and was able to check upon arrival. After that, I finished packing and put all luggages in the car trunk. Since I planned to leave home around 4 am, I needed to be ready by everything before I went to bed.

Why did I leave at 4 am? Well, there were several reasons.

First of all, I like driving in early morning because it is very quiet and there are no traffics on the road all the time. Plus, with a help of good weather, you can have a chance to check the beautiful sunrise while driving.  

Secondly, and most importantly, I can drive as far as possible while my daughter is still sleeping in the car (Of course,  there is 50% success rate). The kids usually do not like sitting in the car for long time.  They can easily get bored and start complaining. That's when you need to stop every service station, take a rest and eventually cause the delay on your plan.

Thirdly, I purchased the afternoon lift tickets. I did not want to be late since we had only 4 hours (between 12 pm and 4 pm) to enjoy skiing.

To make my first day run smoothly, almost everything should be ready on the day before.

1st Day

I woke up at 3:30 am with my alarm sound. I quickly brewed my coffee and took some frozen food from my freezer and put them in my small cool box along with water bottles and a couple of red bull drinks.

The next thing I did was to wake up my wife. Once we were ready to leave,  we still had the most important and difficult task to proceed: Putting my daughter in the car without waking up. You can guess probably what happened. Thanks to my unstable movements during caring her to the car, my daughter woke up and she walked to the car by herself.  This was obviously not a good start...

Despite my worry about my daughter not sleeping enough, she actually went back to sleep after I drove for a half hour . I guess her neck pillow, warm blanket and no too much noise on the road helped her back to sleep faster.  She was able to sleep until we stopped by one of McDonald branches in Ottawa for the breakfast.

Note: I highly recommend brining cups of coffee and any type of sports drinks to prevent you from falling a sleep. However, whenever you feel sleepy, make sure you DO NOT DRIVE. Life is much more important than getting your destination on time. If your partner can drive, taking a turn would be very beneficial, especially for this early morning driving.    

Around 11:30 am, we arrived our hotel Ermitage Du Lac.

Once I got into the hotel, the woman asked me if I was the one who called for the early check-in and told me the room was ready.  Thanks to early checkin, I did not need to spend time and money to find the parking spot and my family was able to have a lunch and prepare for ski in the hotel room comfortably.

1. Getting lift tickets

I purchased the following lift tickets.

• March 9 - Only Afternoon Ski
• March 10 - Full Day
• March 11 - Only Afternoon Ski

When I went to the ticket office, I found two ticket kiosks right next to the ticket office. I used one of kiosks and put the QR code from one of emails, but I wasn't able to get all tickets.

I think it was because my full day tickets were purchased with promotion. I had to go to the ticket office and let them know. They printed all tickets again, but my daughter's last ticket did not print out. I checked again with the ticket office and finally got all tickets.  To be honest, I did not like this whole ticket printing process, but people at the ticket office were super friendly and tried their best to fix the issue. I didn't have time for complains. My attention was all about trying skiing as quickly as possible.

2. Checking the Proof of vaccination

The next thing to do was to show my vaccine proof. There was a small section right next to the ticket kiosk. We showed our IDs (Driver license) and proof of vaccination. After that, they made a hole on your lift card as a poof.

It was very quick and straight forward process.

3. First Ski Experience

My family have tried the following ski resorts before we hit Mont Tremblant.

• Uplands
• Lakeridge
• Dagmar
• Horseshoe
• Snow Valley
• MSLM (Mout St. Louis Moonstone)

Especially, we have purchased the silver pass on MSLM for 2 years and tried to maximize our ski experiences in there during winter time. I can not say our family are very good at skiing, but we feel comfortable by trying green & blue trails and can manage black trails without having a big concern.

So, we took the express gondola and head to the top of mountain. It was not too cold and a perfect weather for skiing.  Luckily, there were not many people too.

For our first try, we decided to take the longest trail which was a combination of green trails. The following map was partially captured from the official website and the entire map of ski trails can be found here.

We took 2 LA CRETE -> 4 NANSEN HAUT -> 6 NANSEN BAS which was around 6 km. It was the longest trail I have never tried before.  It took us around 12 mins to get to the end of the trail where we took the gondola. Even after my first try, my legs seemed to be tired already.  My first impression on the trail was that it was pretty dynamic in terms of  a level of difficulty. Even though it was the green trail, any newbie might feel challenge because there were couple of areas to be considered as blue trail in my opinion. Similarly, some blue trails seemed to be a black trails in other ski resorts I have been tried. For our family, trying this longest trail made feel so happy. It was another level of our ski experience.

After that, we slightly changed our trails like the following:

• 2 LA CRETE -> 4 NANSEN HAUT -> 96 TAM-TAM -> 6 NANSEN BAS
• 2 LA CRETE -> 4 NANSEN HAUT -> 96 TAM-TAM -> 38 PANACHE -> 6 NANSEN BAS (Not recommended. 38 PANACHE requires long walks)
• 2 LA CRETE -> 3 NANSEN (Blue) -> 4 NANSEN HAUT -> 6 NANSEN BAS
• 2 LA CRETE -> 3 NANSEN (Blue) -> 9 MI-CHEMIN -> 20 DESSERRES -> 29 JOHANNSEN (Not recommended. 9 MI-CHEMIN was so long flat trail that requires long walks)

We thought the gondola was running til 4:30 pm, but I was wrong. They stopped running at 4 pm. However, this was sufficient enough to know the taste of skiing in Mont Tremblant.

4.  Ski Valet Service

I did not know there was such thing like Ski Valet Service, but the hotel receptionist let me know about this ski valet when I checked in. I am not sure who introduced the wonderful service at first time, but I want to give him or her the Nobel prize if I can. Using this service was apparently the best thing I had done in Mont Tremblant and I got lots of kudos from my family.

How can you use this? It is easy.  There is a small cabin right next to the gondola express entrance. You just need to tell where you stay and give them your ski and poles. It's completely free.

5.   Rest of a day

As soon as I came back to the hotel, my daughter and I wanted to use the hot tub really bad. There wasn't not many reservation, so we were able to the book quickly. Putting your body into the hot water after ski was the second best thing I had done. I felt so relaxed and all the body pains seemed to go away.

After using this fantastic hot tub experience, we had the dinner and walked around the villages where all stores, hotels and restaurants are gathered.  Simply walking around the village was surprisingly fun. We also bought beavertails as a dessert.

I knew I was supposed to watch a movie with my daughter, but I only remembered the intro of Disney castle and my daughter yelling me "Stop snoring. I can't sleep!" a couple of times...

It was very tired day, but also perfect day.

2nd Day

I woke up at 8:30 am. I didn't know it was because of my snoring, my wife and daughter were still sleeping peacefully. Since the hotel provided the complimentary breakfast, I went to the dining place, ordered some breads, cereal, coffee and juice for my family and brought them back to my room.

Rest of schedules followed similar to the first day except for trying early ski.

We gained some confidence from the first day ski, we decided trying various blue trails. Here is the list of trails we tried. Especially, the first two trails were my favourite routines.

• 2 LA CRETE -> 7 ALPINE -> 8 BEAUVALLON HAUT -> 20 DESSERRES -> 29 JOHANNSEN
• 2 LA CRETE -> 8 BEAUVALLON HAUT -> 20 DESSERRES -> 29 JOHANNSEN
• 40 FRNC SUD->95 L'ALGONQUIN (Green) -> Taking LE SOLEIL lift (recommended for beginners)
• 40 FRNC SUD-> 41 TOBOGGAN -> 42 TAPECUL -> Taking LE SOLEIL lift
• Taking FLYING MILE lift -> 30 LIGNE DE PENTE (Black) -> 29 JOHANNSEN
• 2 LA CRETE -> 7 ALPINE -> Taking TGV lift -> 8 BEAUVALLON HAUT -> 20 DESSERRES -> 29 JOHANNSEN (Before closing routine)

I really liked the first two routines, so I had tried several times before I changed the trails on the other side.

After we finished skiing, my daughter and I headed to the hot tub (I felt like the first use of the hot tub addicted me to it).  Once we had plenty of time to relax, we went to my friends' accommodation for dinner and had delicious meals and drinks.

Another beautiful day was gone.

3rd Day

It was my last day already. Time flied, so we did not want to waste a minute.

In the morning, we had the breakfast and started packing. I moved all luggages to my car trunk and did checkout. My car still stayed safely in the parking lot in the hotel.

Of course, we were all ready for enjoying our last day ski.

At this time, we decided to try some trails on north side (The first 2 days, we were on only south side).

Here is the list of trails that we tried on north side.

• 72 P'TIT BONHEUR -> 77 BEAUCHEMIN BAS -> Taking DUNCAN EXPRESS lift (recommended for beginners)
• 72 P'TIT BONHEUR -> 77 BEAUCHEMIN BAS  -> Taking EXPO EXPRESS lift -> 70 GAGNON -> Taking LOWELLTHOMAS lift
• 71 BEAUCHEMIN HAUT -> 77 BEAUCHEMIN BAS  -> Taking EXPO EXPRESS lift -> 70 GAGNON -> Taking LOWELLTHOMAS lift
• 67 LOWELL THOMAS -> Taking LOWELLTHOMAS lift

We also tried some trails on south side too.

• 18 MCCULLOCH (Black) -> Taking TGV lift
• 2 LA CRETE -> 7 ALPINE -> 8 BEAUVALLON HAUT -> 20 DESSERRES -> 29 JOHANNSEN
• 2 LA CRETE -> 4 NANSEN HAUT -> 6 NANSEN BAS (The longest trail. recommended for beginners)
• Taking FLYING MILE lift -> 30 LIGNE DE PENTE (Black) -> 29 JOHANNSEN

With Taking these last trails, 29 JOHANNSEN -> 37 VOYAGEUR, we were able to come back to the hotel with short walks and head back to my home.

On a way back, we stopped by a take-out restaurant in Ottawa for our dinner. I also went to a beer brewery called spark beer and bought some beers too.  Actually, my must go beer brewery in Ottawa was Small Pony brewery, but they closed early on that day. Well..at least I was able to find other good brewery. :)

From Ottawa to my home, the road condition was extremely bad because snow storm started hitting us. We were supposed to get home before 12 am, but we actually arrived at 2:30 am.

So this was it. It was very tight schedules, but we really enjoyed our trip to Mont Tremblant. I strongly recommend if you haven't been there yet.

I will create one more post regarding a few tips that I learned from the trip.

Thanks for your time to read this post!