Cross Country Skiing

I finally made it cross country skiing! I had to go all the way to Mont Tremblant for it but it was well worth it.

Trying to rent skis here has been quite the adventure as the majority have a very small booking window that fills up extremely fast. However, I discovered that at Mont Tremblant not only can you book online but you can do it well in advance. Cheryl, who I met at Oka the other week, and I decided it would be worth the drive since it's such a hassle to rent nearby.

We used to cross country a bunch when I was younger since we lived so close to trails. However, it has been a long time so I wasn't sure how it was going to go. Once we got our rental skis, I was teaching Cheryl how to put hers on. I was paying way more attention to mine than hers as I explained it when we heard a voice from behind us yell out "you should really turn those skis around". Turns out Cheryl had hers face the wrong way. This definitely got us laughing and set the mood for the whole day.

The guy who had called out to us was actually a guide an information booth so we went over to chat with him before picking a trail. He showed us a map and recommended an easy loop around a lake. He even gave us a bag of birdseed and told us where we could feed the birds. He also gave a warning of which trail was the hardest and obviously we listened really well.

The trail started off really pretty and easy, it was well groomed with tracks for us to use. I was the first one to fall, getting cocky going down a hill but it was funny. We picked which trails to take at the intersections on a whim...

I think you see where this is going.

The up hills started to get longer, the down hills got steeper, the turns got tighter. We fell more. But it was fun. We were laughing so hard every time we wiped out. The sun was shining and it was a beautiful day.

The downhills kept getting steeper and had turns as you went. We had very limited control over our direction and the turns were hard. Eventually Cheryl took off her skis to walk down. I was still feeling adventurous so I started down the hill, once I got to a turn and saw that there was a drop off in front of me and then a turn to another steep downhill, I sat down to control my fall. Except, I was wearing pretty good water proof pants. The ones that are super slippery. And I ended up continuing down the hill about ten feet on my butt unable to stop.

I decided to admit defeat and took my skis off as well, it's really not worth breaking a leg. We started walking down the steepest hill we had encountered yet. I felt bad that we were walking down the nicely groomed trail so I decided to step over to the side. Apparently I stepped off the trail itself and ended up past my knee in snow. Thankfully it was only one leg so I was able to get out relatively easily. However, a few moments later a skier coming behind us yelled to alert us he was coming. Cheryl was so startled that she jumped out of the way and went off trail and ended up with snow past her knees on both legs! While I was trying to help her up, we heard a yell and the guy who had gone past us had wiped out hard on the next turn.

Eventually the hills seemed to settle down a bit and we put our skis back on. The next map we saw, we looked at where we were and realized we had taken the most advanced trail. Go big or go home, right?

We had a good laugh and then continued on the easier loop the guide had recommended to us. And what a difference it was in the terrain. We couldn't stop laughing at how significantly easier this loop was.

We had a little picnic by a lake and then made our way to the guide. We thought we owed him an update on our adventure of the day. He was astounded that we went on that trail, especially since it was Cheryl's first time on cross country skies. Apparently it's the most advanced of the trails and not a lot of people go on it. We just told him it was a lot of fun and we'd do it again.

We were approaching the time to return our skis at this point, and realizing how sore we were getting. And not just sore from unused muscles but sore from all the falls. Overall, it was a fantastic day, well worth the drive and now we're both hooked on cross country.