Canada high: skiing Quebec's Le Massif

Colin Nicholson explores Quebec’s Le Massif ski area, now with a new hotel and easily accessible by luxury train

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31 October 2012

Le Massif in Québec is by any account an amazing place to ski. With pistes dropping into the sea, you get views like in no other resort. But this year it gained an added attraction — a dedicated railway line to transport guests there in the height of luxury.

While we in Britain lost many of our branch lines decades ago — and some particularly scenic ones at that — the resort has reopened the Victorian route that ran from the capital of the Canadian province, Québec City, along the banks of the St Lawrence river towards the Atlantic Ocean.

But I’m rushing ahead here and, as every lover of train travel knows, great railway journeys are not to be hurried. So, first things first.

Québec City was in the full throes of Carnaval — the biggest winter carnival in the world — when we arrived to gather with our friends at the Château Laurier for our big adventure. So it was bleary-eyed that we left the historic city early the next morning, navigating our way around the ice and snow sculptures that decorate its ramparts, to arrive at the frozen Montmorency waterfalls, just outside the city walls.

Here, domed viewing cars await to take you on your hour-and-three-quarter journey.

So hop on, and let the train take the strain in what will certainly be your most indulgent resort transfer ever.

As the vintage diesel engines pull away, you enter the region of Charlevoix, the culinary heart of Québec. And you’ll know it, as the food is locally sourced, from the maple syrup on your pancakes to the cheese melting in your omelette, as you sit back and watch the sun rise across the glimmering waters.

Set up for the day, we arrived at the station near the tiny fishing village of Petite-Rivière-Saint-François, which, remarkably, is also the base of the ski resort with the greatest vertical drop in Canada east of the Rockies. Once we’d taken the gondola up we weren’t disappointed, as Le Massif’s convex pistes appeared like springboards ready to throw us into the mighty gulf below. At 2,650ft above sea level, we realised the specks below were tankers, picking their way through a maze of ice floes towards the Great Lakes.

If it all sounds a bit fantastical, that’s because it’s pure circus. When Cirque du Soleil’s co-founder Daniel Gauthier sold his share of the company to his erstwhile fellow street performer Guy Laliberté, he used part of the money to buy Le Massif and develop the resort, adding new lifts, new runs and new challenges.

The easiest way down the mountain is marked for beginners and nervous intermediates, as is common in North America. It follows gentle green runs that criss-cross the more demanding pistes, so even a mixed ability group like ours could ski together, unlike in many Alpine resorts.

We did run after run down these wonderfully curling forest trails, which are so full of intrigue that at times they immerse you deep in the woods, while at other times they unexpectedly open out to reveal spectacular views of the estuary.

At the end of the day, the train waits to take day-trippers back, but we weren’t ready to leave just yet. Last month, with great fanfare, the resort opened the 145-room Hôtel La Ferme in Baie St Paul, the nearest town to Le Massif, offering live music, shows and other cultural events by the railway station there.

But we had booked into L’estampilles, a pretty wooden inn nearby with ornate shutters and balconies. Here, we soaked in the hot tub under the stars and stretched our well-used legs in the sauna, before heading into town.

Baie St Paul is where Guy Gauthier and Daniel Laliberté founded Cirque du Soleil but they were just two of a series of artists who have been coming here for generations, in particular painters inspired by the quality of the light and the unique landscape.

In town, fairy lights guided us along the wooden balconies in front of the many art galleries, although by this time it was the menus of fantastic restaurants such as the quirky Grande Maison Inn, where you can get a five-course meal for £25, that we were savouring. So it was only after dinner that we could really study the fascinating renditions of the landscape formed by a meteorite collision 350 million years ago, which shaped Le Massif’s steep slopes.

The next day, I felt up for tackling the resort’s glades — thinned-out coppices of birch and beech — which are guaranteed to test any skier to the limit. A few red and gold leaves, remnants of a time when the mountainside was ablaze with autumn colours, hung from the trees. And I felt I had almost as tenuous a hold on my existence as I planned my course between thick trunks. But after many faltering starts, much tree-hugging and a few cartoon-style ski tracks either side of small pines, I had conquered Le Massif’s seven glades.

I was reunited with my long-suffering partner for lunch. Whereas this would extend to little more than a Coke and fries at most North American resorts, this is Nouvelle France, which at its height in the 18th century stretched all the way to Louisiana. The empire may have disappeared but haute cuisine still rules supreme in Francophone America, so even the self-service restaurant has a choice of excellent dishes, and at Mer & Monts you can indulge in a four-course meal with wine.

The next day, I again abandoned my party to explore some of Le Massif’s back-country, which you can do without a guide.

After a 15-minute hike to the top of Mont à Liguori, I was rewarded with a duvet of soft snow, piled high into pillows around the tree boles. The distant whoops of excitement of two snowboarders ahead of me soon

gave way to silence and, as I picked my way through the trees, I felt as if I was in the great Canadian wilderness. But the bright, shimmering light glinting off the sea guided me back to the station.

A four-course dinner including lobster sauce and other specialities of Charlevoix is the reward for your efforts as you watch the sun set over the St Lawrence. And it is a vision that will now stay with me forever, thanks to a small oil painting carefully wrapped in my suitcase.

DETAILS: CANADA

Air Canada flies daily from Heathrow to Québec City, returns from £585, aircanada.com

L’estampilles in Baie St Paul has doubles from £100 B&B, lestampilles.com

Hôtel Château Laurier in Québec City has doubles from £75 room only hotelchateaulaurier.com

lemassif.com/en

bonjourquebec.co.uk

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