The sunny skies from the day before are continuing today, which means today will be a good day of skiing.  The clear days are often colder than overcast days, but I find them to be drier and actually feel warmer than the cloudy days with a higher temperature.

Unfortunately, Nadine’s legs are still feeling a little sore, so I’ll be skiing on my own today, which will give me some time to explore some new ski territory.

Mont-Tremblant has four skiable sides…  the South (which is where the main village is located), the North, the Edge and Soleil.  Because the Soleil side doesn’t have any beginner runs, I had not skied it before when I was out with Nadine.  When we were up last year, Soleil was closed due to poor conditions.  Today, however, it’s open, and it is where I spent nearly the entire day.  The conditions were great and there seemed to be very few people anywhere!

My new favourite ski run at Mont-Tremblant is called Toboggan.  It’s a nice intermediate run, filled with little hills, twists and turns through the trees.  And unlike many of the runs on the South side, which tend to level out half way down before picking up again (there are lifts that allow skiers to ski just the top or bottom half of the mountain), runs on the Soleil side just keep going the entire way down, keeping up both interest and challenge all the way.

Here is a photo from the start of the Toboggan run.

After skiing about a dozen runs on the Soleil side, it was time for lunch.  Instead of heading down into the village, or going into the busy cafeteria at the top of the mountain, I skied over to the Trappers Refuge, which is a small cabin about one third of the way down the Soleil side of the mountain.  It is a rustic cabin, heated by woodstove, with a few tables inside.  There were only about six other skiers there, and I was able to pop in and get a sandwich and a hot chocolate.

Here are the “washrooms”, which fortunately, I didn’t need to use.

Here is the view from the porch on the front of the cabin.  This is definitely a better place to stop for a mid-day break.

After lunch, I continued to ski on the Soleil side for the rest of the afternoon.  When it was time to head back to the hotel, I took the Soleil lift back to the summit and skied down the South side.  I found a nice run called McCulloch, which while rated as a black run, I would call it an “easy black”, or and “advanced blue”.  It was a nice run to finish the day.

Back at the hotel, after our evening appetizers, we went downstairs to the Nansen Lounge for dinner.

After dinner, we returned to the room to get some rest for another day of skiing tomorrow.