From the heart of winter to the height of summer, offers year-round delights to every traveler. This famed resort hub in the Laurentian Mountains–so easy to reach from Montreal, Quebec City, and Ottawa–will keep you coming back across the calendar.
Here’s a sweeping survey of some of the seasonal highlights in the Tremblant region, ripe for the picking when you’re staying at Chateau Beauvallon or any of the other varied area accommodations.
Legendary Winter
Most Quebeckers would probably tell you the peak time of year in Mont-Tremblant is the winter, and there’s no question the region’s best-known as a snow-junkie’s paradise. The ski and snowboard slopes are second to none, and there’s also a lot of world-class trail mileage for cross-country skiers, snowshoers, and snowmobilers.
If you’ve always wanted to try mushing, meantime, you’ll find a plethora of Mont-Tremblant dog teams ready to ferry you through the snow-swamped forests. Equally popular are horse-drawn sleigh excursions and horseback rides, where strong-muscled steeds with steaming breath give you an up-close look at the crystalline splendor of a Laurentian winter. You can even hop on a “fat bike” to pedal the snowpack, or snarl the powdered tracks on a dune buggy.
Throw in holiday markets, ice-skating, and Scandinavian baths and saunas, and you’re going to be hard-pressed naming a better winter getaway in southern Quebec than Mont-Tremblant.
The Spring Explosion
Throughout much of the Laurentian spring, the Mont-Tremblant mountainsides continue to serve skiers and snowboarders. But you can also track down one of the many regional “sugar shacks” for a look at the classic Quebecois industry of maple-syrup making, and to taste a lot of syrupy confections in the process. And when you’re not sugarbush touring, you can seek out the earliest green-up in the hardwood groves; before long, vernal wildflowers–a photographer’s dream–are sealing winter’s fate beautifully all over the forests.
Endless Summer
All right, let’s take that subheading back: summertime in Quebec is anything but endless. That said, the delights of the high-sun season are so rich and varied that a Mont-Tremblant vacation this time of year seems to take you right out of time.
The same rolling Laurentian plateaus and heavy-timbered gorges that accommodated Nordic skiing and dog-sledding become lovely settings for day-hiking, backpacking, and mountain biking–not least in the gorgeous wilds of Mont-Tremblant National Park. And you can unlock your inner voyager with a canoe or kayak safari along one of the region’s many winding rivers and birch-nestled lakes–or commune with the whitewater on a rafting trip!
In the Mont-Tremblant village and other area hamlets, you’ve also got the pleasures of mini-golfing, ziplining, swimming, and good old-fashioned R&R.
Delicious Autumn
As summer slides into fall in the Laurentian Mountains, the outdoor recreation just gets better: The weather’s perfect for long hikes, quiet paddling trips, and marshmallow-roasting campfires. Meanwhile, the scenery takes on a magical tone as maples, cherries, aspens, and other hardwoods turn their fiery autumnal colors. “Leaf-peeping” in the Mont-Tremblant vicinity is its own unforgettable pastime.
Keep in mind that many of Mont-Tremblant’s highlights are truly year-round, whether it’s shopping your way through the charming storefronts or feasting your way through dozens of top-notch restaurants.
But season-specific activities are irresistible: They ground you in the time and the place like nothing else. Whatever corner of the calendar you visit Mont-Tremblant in, you’re bound to get hooked–and you’ll want to return again and again to see it in every one of its seasonal guises!
Author: Carmen Johnson enjoys her work as an executive PA and spends her spare time as a local tour guide. She spent many happy days in her childhood visiting Mont Tremblant and enjoys being to share her experiences online. Carmen writes for a number of travel-related websites.
