jamesdeluxe
Well-known member
- Joined
- Jul 17, 2020
Another fantastic day in Quebec that mixed great cuisine with excellent skiing. With a foot of new snow decorating the art-filled village of Baie Saint-Paul, we started off with breakfast at atmospheric Chez Bouquet:
As good as the food was:
I found it hard to concentrate on the meal with this scene outside:
We arrived at 9:45 at Mont Grand-Fonds, which was reporting 18 inches of new snow. There were only eight cars ahead of us in the parking lot.
Mont Grand-Fonds is a fun locals mountain with an interesting story. Formerly a private ski area that was always on the verge of going under, it is now owned by the nearby municipality of La Malbaie and run by a non-profit organization with a very detailed and realistic business plan. General Director Daniel Bouchard, who worked many years at Mont Sainte-Anne, spoke with me at length about Mont Grand-Fonds’ concept — one in which the citizens of La Malbaie are partners and directly responsible for its success.
We didn’t have our fat skis with us, and Juliet was struggling with the wind-affected pow on her skinny sticks, so I went off and did a bunch of 1,300-vert runs by myself, which all looked like this:
But since this is a couple’s vacation, I spent the rest of the day with her on groomed runs that had four to six inches of soft untracked and skied beautifully. My wife loved the blue groomers at Grand-Fonds that have birch trees scattered every 30 or so yards like on the aptly-named “Bouleaux” (birches) trail:
FYI: Since the snow flurries cut down on visibility, here’s what Grand-Fonds looks like on a clear day — taken in January 2005 after a rain/freeze event:
The trails go green to black from skier’s left to right:
View of the Saint Lawrence in the upper left:
As good as the food was:
I found it hard to concentrate on the meal with this scene outside:
We arrived at 9:45 at Mont Grand-Fonds, which was reporting 18 inches of new snow. There were only eight cars ahead of us in the parking lot.
Mont Grand-Fonds is a fun locals mountain with an interesting story. Formerly a private ski area that was always on the verge of going under, it is now owned by the nearby municipality of La Malbaie and run by a non-profit organization with a very detailed and realistic business plan. General Director Daniel Bouchard, who worked many years at Mont Sainte-Anne, spoke with me at length about Mont Grand-Fonds’ concept — one in which the citizens of La Malbaie are partners and directly responsible for its success.
We didn’t have our fat skis with us, and Juliet was struggling with the wind-affected pow on her skinny sticks, so I went off and did a bunch of 1,300-vert runs by myself, which all looked like this:
But since this is a couple’s vacation, I spent the rest of the day with her on groomed runs that had four to six inches of soft untracked and skied beautifully. My wife loved the blue groomers at Grand-Fonds that have birch trees scattered every 30 or so yards like on the aptly-named “Bouleaux” (birches) trail:
FYI: Since the snow flurries cut down on visibility, here’s what Grand-Fonds looks like on a clear day — taken in January 2005 after a rain/freeze event:
The trails go green to black from skier’s left to right:
View of the Saint Lawrence in the upper left:
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