The Review

We've spent the last 4 days in Mont-Tremblant, a ski resort about 2 hours north of Montreal. We picked it because we only had 5 days because my daughter has 7 !#$%ing basketball games during break so we couldn't travel far. Tremblant was relatively close to home and has a great reputation for and eastern ski area and as a resort town.

The best decision I made in planning this trip is the place we're staying. Many of the hotels and condos here are considered "ski-in, ski out," but I'd been told by a friend that he's stayed in such a place and had to walk up a bunch of icy stairs to get to the lift. I can dutifully report that there are a great number of icy steps here, and people do ski down to their rooms through town. The place we're staying is kind of like a hotel, but there's no restaurant or little shop in the lobby or even a newspaper stand. What it does have is a section with 2 and 3 bedroom condos and a back entrance about 100 feet from the lifts. I've never stayed right on the slope before and it's great to be able to go out the door at 3:00 when then lifts close at 3:30 and get 2 runs in. The ski school and rental shop are even closer.

The skiing is good. The conditions the first day were as good as anything I've ever had in the east, but it rained pretty heavily the first night and after that it was never any better than fair. I actually fell several times today, more than I'd fallen in the past 3 years total. I know I'm older and not in as good a shape as usual, but it think that the conditions had something to do with it. My favorite thing was when I'd fallen (slipped, really) on some ice and lost a ski. I set the ski down and started to step into the binding, but as I did, my feet slipped out and I started sliding down this very steep hill on one ski. Fortunately, I grabbed the other ski as I slid by, because I slid a good 75 feet down the hill before I was able to use my one attached ski to stop myself.

Ice aside, it's a nice mountain, not too easy and not too hard and with lots of fast lifts. The people who work here are very accommodating and the rental equipment is first-rate.

The town is kind of a mish-mosh of resorty type stuff. There are lots of places to get winter wear, which I assume convert to t-shirt shops in the summer. The restaurants are decent, though nothing special as far as I can see. I think they have to cater to the day-trippers and drinkers too much to focus completely on cuisine. We didn't have a bad meal, but there was nothing memorable about any of it. The crepe place is good, and the brewpub has surprisingly good food, though they did a huge plates on tiny tables thing that was more than a little bit irritating. We also ate at a bistro that had a kind of sports bar in the middle, with TV's showing the same hockey game on 2 different channels. The food there was fine too, but the service was awful. Everything came out at the same time, and two of the 4 orders came out wrong. But it was still nice food.

So aside from the ice problem mentioned below, I'd have to give it a thumbs up. If you actually want to know about the hotel, I'll probably review it on TripAdvisor pretty soon.