Skiers have been coming to Mont Tremblant—a town in Quebec’s Laurentian Mountains, about two hours northwest of Montreal—since at least the 1920s. However, there’s much more to Mont Tremblant than strapping two strips of fiberglass-covered wood to your feet and hurtling down a steep slope.
As you can probably tell, skiing isn’t really my jam. However, I’ve been to Mont Tremblant many times and I’ve always managed to enjoy myself in many other ways—and in all four seasons.
Before I tell you about them, a word of explanation. When you’re in Quebec, you’ll often hear people refer to Tremblant rather than Mont Tremblant. Mont Tremblant is the name of a town. Tremblant is the name of the massive ski resort about a 15-minute drive north of the town of Mont Tremblant. Hope that clears things up.
Self-Care in Mont Tremblant: Spa Scandinave
My most recent visit to Mont Tremblant was in winter. While the ski bunnies were all shivering in the chairlift lineup, I was soaking in a steaming outdoor hot tub overlooking the Diable River at Spa Scandinave Mont Tremblant, on the edge of the Tremblant resort.
After extracting myself from the water, I took an extremely short dip under an ice-cold waterfall before throwing on a fluffy bathrobe and hightailing it for the main building. There, I kicked back with a magazine on a cozy lounge chair for a few minutes, then popped into a cedar-scented, sunlit sauna to warm up again.
Nordic-style spas are hugely popular across Quebec. If you enjoy the hot-cold-relax thermal circuit promoted at these spas, you’ll have no shortage of places to indulge. I’ve checked out lots of them, and Spa Scandinave Mont Tremblant ranks among the best. Like most Quebec thermal spas, it is open year round.
Mont Tremblant Winter Sports Beyond Skiing
Perhaps a spa day sounds a bit too sedate? Fat biking or snowmobiling may be more your speed. It has been years since I’ve snowmobiled at Mont Tremblant, but I recently tried fat biking and can highly recommend it, with two caveats.
First, get an electric-assisted fat bike. Those big tires are great for plowing along snow-covered mountain trails, but they’re also heavy and take a lot of effort to put into motion. Unless you’re in marathon-level shape, you’ll probably appreciate the extra boost the electric motor provides.
Second, put anything valuable into a tightly zippered pocket, as you will almost certainly fall at least once. If you wipe out on a bank of fresh snow and your wallet falls out of your pocket, chances are high that it won’t turn up again until spring. One of the other people in my fat biking group ran into exactly that issue, and it was only by good luck that the same thing didn’t happen to me.
To get your gear and a guide, head to D-Tour in Mont Tremblant. The outdoor adventure company has just about every kind of rental sports equipment you can imagine, including snowmobiles, snowshoes and cross-country skis. D-Tour can even arrange for you to go dog sledding.
Mont Tremblant Summer Sports
Personally, I find Mont Tremblant more fun in summer than in winter—partly because I’m perpetually cold from October to March, and partly because there’s just so much to do at Mont Tremblant in summer. The mountains that attract skiers and snowboarders in winter are wonderful to hike up and along, and the trails offer expansive views of Tremblant resort, Lake Tremblant, the town and the surrounding low-lying mountains.
At Tremblant resort, you can also go swimming, sailing, horseback riding, waterskiing, golfing, biking, fishing or paddling, but those are just the most familiar of the many activities on offer.
I once spent a very enjoyable hour learning the basics of falconry with a Tremblant instructor. It was a rush to hold out my hand and have a Harris hawk swoop down from the trees to grab a morsel of meat from my gloved fingers. The resort’s zipline course was also a great way to boost my adrenaline.
You could stay a week and still not run out of amusements, which include a summer luge track and a contraption called a Eurobungy, which hooks people—usually kids—into a harness and lets them bounce up and down while suspended from big bungy cords. (Um, no thanks.)
And within an hour or so of the resort, you can take an ultralight plane ride, climb along a cliff face on a via ferrata or go whitewater rafting.
Mont Tremblant in Fall: It’s All About the Leaf Peeping
Eastern Canada is justly famous for its fall colors, and one of the best places to enjoy them is Mont Tremblant. Visit between late September and mid-October for the best show.
Fall foliage helicopter tours have long been popular, but if you’d like to rack up some steps on your Fitbit while seeing the leaves, I highly recommend Sentier de Cimes, a boardwalk and 130-foot-high observation tower about a 10-minute drive east of Mont Tremblant. The attraction is open year round, but fall is its high season. In fact, try to arrive early in the morning on a weekday if you want to avoid the crowds. I once showed up at 11:30am on the first Monday in October, and staffers were already busy directing traffic in and out of the jammed parking lot.
Mont Tremblant Restaurants: Eat Heartily
With all that biking and hiking and falconry and leaf peeping, I always work up a serious appetite at Mont Tremblant. Pasta, pizza, cheese, baked goods—bring it all on.
The architecture in the Tremblant resort village is a weird blend of styles, as if the old sections of Quebec City had been put in a blender with some Swiss mountain chalets and a couple of New England prep schools. However, tucked underneath those mansard roofs and dormer windows are about three dozen places to eat and drink, and many of them are quite good.
One of my favorites is A Mano Trattoria, an Italian restaurant where the menu leans heavily on the classics—bruschetta, osso bucco, risotto ai funghi—but those classics are done very well. On my last visit, the server took pains to explain that my spaghetti carbonara would be made the traditional way, without cream. Perhaps he’d had bad reviews from cream lovers, but I had no complaints. It was some of the best carbonara I’ve ever had outside of Italy.
At La Savoie, the quality of the meal depends partly on the diners, as family-style fondue is the main attraction. Come prepared to cook your own dinner by dipping raw chicken, beef, shrimp and vegetables into pots of simmering broth, oil or wine at your table. On my last visit, our group of six also ordered raclette, a big dish of melted cheese that came with boiled potatoes, parma ham and other dunkable items. Aside from the hearty, warming food, the star of the night was a young fawn, who stepped delicately through the snow outside our window to peer in at us as we ate.
So, sure, you could spend your whole visit to Mont Tremblant skiing. But, as I hope I’ve made clear, you don’t have to.
