Le Massif’s impressive vertical and its perch above the St. Lawrence River make it unique in eastern North America.
Le Massif’s impressive vertical and its perch above the St. Lawrence River make it unique in eastern North America.
LE MASSIF
RECOMMENDED BY Leslie Anthony
“I grew up in Toronto, where the skiing was not much to write home about,” Leslie Anthony began. “There were some small hills in the region and nothing you could describe as powder. In the lift lines, you’d sometimes hear people whispering about this place in Quebec called Le Massif. The whisperers said there was no lift, but school buses would take you to the top of a large mountain. Once there, you had guides and skied fresh powder. This made little sense to me, as it didn’t square with what I knew of eastern skiing. I couldn’t imagine a place where there was enough snowfall to support powder skiing, let alone a big mountain with powder.”
Le Massif rises near the center of the Charlevoix region, roughly fifty miles northeast of Quebec City. At a height of less than 2,700 feet, the mountain might be easily dismissed; yet nearly all the mountain’s 2,645 feet translate into vertical (namely 2,526 feet). This gives Le Massif more vertical than any mountain east of the Canadian Rockies. Perhaps more importantly, the mountain’s location on the north shore of the St. Lawrence River generates Rockies-like snowfalls—some years, more than twenty feet.
“By the time I’d reached my early twenties, I’d had a chance to ski-bum around a bit,” Leslie continued. “I’d spent time in South America, New Zealand, skied a few volcanoes in Mexico. This was the early 1980s, and many people were learning to telemark and do more backcountry skiing, trying to find fresh powder. I was hanging out with the telemark crowd in Ontario, an adventurous group. Though I’d traveled halfway around the world to ski, I still hadn’t made it to Le Massif. Then an opportunity arose. I was beginning to do some writing, and I was invited to go over as a guest of a Quebec tourism group. I jumped on the chance with a photographer named Henry Georgi. I found that all the rumors were true—but the mountain was bigger and better than I’d heard.
“We arrived on St. Patrick’s Day, and were greeted by sixty centimeters (two feet) of snow—as much as I’d seen in Ontario in ten years! The guys who’d started the ski opera-tion—Marc Deschamps and Jean Chouinard—were extremely passionate about skiing the Charlevoix region and assembling a downhill experience you couldn’t have anywhere else. Deschamps had built a road from the highway up to the escarpment. He’d contracted with local ski buses to ferry skiers from the bottom to the top. There were nine buses total, which could accommodate three hundred skiers. He would never sell more tickets than that. It was a half-hour ride. Each bus had two guides. They’d get everyone singing songs on the ride up, tell jokes, hand out cookies—it was utterly unique.
“At that time, none of the runs had names, just numbers. Some went all the way down to sea level; there was a little village at the bottom. That day, we made five runs. It was all untracked powder. The vistas were otherworldly, as the mountain looks out over the St. Lawrence River, which is twenty-five miles across. We could see icebergs in the river, and could look out all the way to Maine, fifty or sixty miles to the south. The vertical was so precipitous, at times you felt like you were going to ski into the water.
“The photos Henri took that trip were out of this world. Le Massif looked like a B.C. heli-ski operation. The images made their way to Casey Sheehan at Powder, and he asked if there was anything he should know about the operation. I wrote a story, and they went nuts, as they’d never had anything like this from the east. Soon I was one of their main contributors, and my career as a ski journalist was launched.”
There have been changes at Le Massif since Leslie’s first visit. School buses have been replaced by high-speed ski lifts. A train from Quebec City now delivers visitors to the base of the mountain, a well-appointed lodge waits at the top, and restaurants showcasing the bounties of greater Charlevoix are dotted about the terrain. Many of these amenities come courtesy of Daniel Gauthier, cofounder of Cirque du Soleil, who acquired the resort in 2002. Gauthier has also been sprinkling Vaudeville-style entertainers around the mountain—jugglers, ice sculptors, clowns, and the like—who add a new dimension of entertainment. “I’ve tracked the evolution of Le Massif from its humble beginnings,” Leslie said. “It’s so different now from the backwoods experience it once was, with the wild guides leading sing-alongs on the bus. It’s a pretty slick operation now, but I think it’s still true to the vision that its founders had to create a low-impact ski area.
“From a skiing perspective, I think they’ve continued to cultivate a culture where people can do any kind of skiing they want to. They still have some of the steepest and longest runs in the east. They have some massive backcountry terrain with gulleys and trees. There’s even an FIS-sanctioned Olympic downhill run [La Charlevoix, with a pitch of 64 percent in places], and an Alps-style luge run that runs five or six miles. I don’t think you’d find that sort of thing in the states, due to liability issues.”
One thing hasn’t changed—the unmatched Gulf of St. Lawrence views. “You can’t get views like this anywhere else in North America,” Leslie added, “and that in itself is uplifting. If you’re on top of an icy hill in Vermont, it’s hard to get past figuring out how to get down. On Le Massif, you’re unconcerned about how you get down, even if you have crummy conditions. You’re taking in what’s in front of you, not what’s underfoot.”
LESLIE ANTHONY is a writer, editor, and filmmaker. His PhD in zoology belies a career that includes managing editor of Powder and creative director of Skier. He resides on the masthead of several North American ski and outdoor magazines, and his work appears annually in twelve countries in seven languages. He writes broadly on subjects ranging from imaginary monsters to fossil smuggling, invasive species to China’s nascent ski industry. He has authored several books, including the acclaimed White Planet: A Mad Dash Through Modern Global Ski Culture.
If You Go
Getting There: Quebec City is the staging area for Le Massif, and it’s served by many carriers, including Air Canada (888-247-2262; www.aircanada.ca) and Delta Airlines (800-241-4141; www.delta.com). Train service from Quebec City is available from VIA Rail (888-842-7245; www.viarail.ca).
Season: The season at Le Massif generally runs from early December to late April. See up-to-date ski reports at www.lemassif.com (877-536-2774).
Lift Tickets: Full-day tickets are $67 (CAD). Multi-day tickets are available.
Level of Difficulty: Roughly half of Le Massif’s fifty-plus trails and glades are classified as beginner and intermediate; 35 percent of the mountain’s terrain is considered expert.
Accommodations: A number of ski and stay packages are available. See details at www.lemassif.com/en/planifier/forfaits.
