[road trip] A day at Mont-Tremblant National Park (Canada)

After 2 days in the Eastern Townships, we continue on our way to spend the 3rd day of the extended weekend at Mont-Tremblant National Park. This park is so large that despite its proximity to Montreal (1h30 drive), we can easily camp there and spend several days.

Part 1: Travel Diary Part
2: Practical Tips

Part 1: Travel Diary

We still have the car rented at Avis (link, 40$CA/day), the weather is splendid and there are fortunately not too many people on the road because it’s Sunday.

We arrive at the town of Mont-Tremblant, on the shores of Lake Mont-Tremblant. It’s a ski resort so it has faux-airs of Chamonix, with its pretty chalets, downtown shopping, boutiques selling hiking clothes… and its cable cars.

It’s a bit too clean/too much “Disneyland” for my taste and the restaurants aren’t that great. But there are a lot of activities and I think you can spend a whole day there without any problem. We opt for the cable car (which they call “panoramic gondola”) which takes us in about 20 minutes to the top. Approximately 23$CAD/person (round trip)

Arrived to the top, it must be cold all of a sudden, there is about 10°C difference between the city and the top. Luckily I always have my comforter with me.

There is a kind of 360°C observatory made of wood at 200m from the cable car, where you have an incredible view of the surroundings. Apparently, this summit is the highest of the corner, so we see absolutely EVERYTHING.

Unfortunately, the pictures do not show all the beauty of the place. One can see, with the naked eye, many mountains on the horizon, the islets, and even a spa pool in the middle of the greenery

We go down from the observatory and walk around a bit more in the area

Instead of taking the cable car, we could have come by foot, but it doesn’t really appeal to me 🙂 and when I see the steepness of the slopes, you have to be damn good to ski here. At the place where JB sits on the picture above, the slope is almost vertical.

This is just a preview of the park, as there are a lot of hikes to do in the area. We aim at the rat fall, but after a mistake, we go to another fall, on the other side of the fall that we wanted to visit. We went very close to Ottawa, instead of getting a little closer to Quebec. #fail

Very tired since a few days because of the non-stop driving on small roads, JB suggests that we go home, instead of turning around and losing another 2 hours to drive + 1h30 to get back to Montreal.

Sorry we can’t show you more of Mont-Tremblant National Park, but we’ll put the hiking suggestions below.

Part 2: Practical Tips

This booklet is the continuation of the Eastern Townships booklet (read it here). To read other Canadian travel journals, please visit this page

Maps of the trails & the pedestrian village (which we visited) are available on this site: https: //www.tremblant.ca/fr/montagne-village/cartes