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By Lloyd Langlois, April 25, 2011 8:10 am

As much as we hate to admit it, this season is more or less a goner. But next season – although it may seem light years away – is in fact right around the corner (yes, I am an optimist). And now (no, not next week, now) is the perfect time to start looking ahead.

Remember back in December, that first day on the slopes? Do you remember the elation of finally being out there? And do you remember that other feeling…? Let me remind you. It’s called frustration. By this time of year, if you’ve been skiing or riding pretty regularly through the season, you’re probably in decent shape, which means you have repressed the memory of how it feels to be out on the hill for the first time in months, on shaky legs, and barely able to tackle even a blue square with much vigor. Next December though, all that frustration will come rushing back to you – unless you take steps to prevent it.

The right fitness training program can go a long way to keeping your body in top shape for the ski season, which means you get to skip the part of the season where you are bringing your skill level back up to where you know it should be, and go straight to the fun part.

The jury’s still out on what type of exercises will give the absolute best results – my thinking tends to be that as long as you’re doing something to keep your fitness level up, and working the right muscle groups, you’re already miles ahead. Because variety is the spice of life, here are two great off-season workouts, of varying intensity, that you can adopt starting now.

The first one comes courtesy of Ski Magazine. It’s a quick three and a half minute video led by World Champion Mogul skier Patrick Deneen, who takes us through six moves to get into top shape for moguls. Although he makes it look effortless, none of these is particularly easy to master – it may take you the rest of the off-season to get it down…Essentially, he is targeting muscle groups, and working on balance and stability. See it here.

The second comes from National Geographic Adventure, and is a slightly simpler version – one that you could probably even do at home. Trainer Bill Knowles is all about paring down to shape up; he does away with equipment so the focus is on you and your body. See it here.

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By Lloyd Langlois, April 22, 2011 9:05 am

Ok, so it didn’t happen here in Québec – but it could! All it would take would be… Well, a skier as ballsy as Troy Hartman and access to a jetpack. On second thought, probably not so easy to replicate. In any case, it’s completely entertaining and utterly preposterous to watch this. It starts off noisy and slow, and not super impressive – but wait until he gets going. It’s hard to believe it’s even real (after many Google searches though, it’s clear that it is). Happy Friday – and enjoy!

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By Lloyd Langlois, April 20, 2011 9:34 am

Well, maybe not literally, but as one of Québec’s most popular ski hills, it’s nice to see that there is some development in the works for Bromont. The development in question is not, this time around, happening on the slopes – this improvement is to the level of accommodation you can expect when you travel to Bromont for more than just the day.

The hill opened in 1964, and for the first couple of decades of the mountain’s existence as a ski destination, it must be said that it was fairly unremarkable. Not that big and without a ton of runs, Bromont’s main claim to fame (still one of its strongest selling points) was the fact that it’s so incredibly close to downtown Montreal.

It’s tough to thrive on accessibility alone though, and in recent years, Bromont has finally been exploited to its full potential. Today, Bromont is the largest illuminated ski hill in Eastern North America with 77 runs open after dark. Even during the day, the skiing and riding is a whole lot better than it once was, with 144 runs open over 7 faces of the mountain.

One thing Bromont has always lacked though, was a proper resort-hotel to go along with it. The mountain is huge with Bromont locals and Montrealers alike, but it’s not easy to attract any real ski tourism without a single ski-in-ski-out hotel, and barely any high-end accommodations anywhere in the area.

Well, it looks like that’s changing for the 2012 season. A new resort hotel, Le Club des Cantons, is going up at Bromont, and my guess is that, for better or for worse, this will be something of a game changer for the hill, opening the doors to a different sort of ski crowd.

Word has it that Le Club will be both a hotel and a condo development, and that eventually it will encompass everything from a spa, to a top notch restaurant, to a conference centre. According to the Montreal Gazette, “Phase I of Le Club des Cantons will be a $48 million venture that will encompass l’Auberge, a luxurious 48-room hotel with a bar, a gourmet dining room and a swimming pool. Phase I also will include 28 condominiums and townhouses. The spa, a conference centre and other condos will be part of Phase II.”

It should be fun to see this go up – from the sounds of it this construction will be major, and will bring major and interesting change to the hill and to the area, year-round. We’ll be watching…

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By Lloyd Langlois, April 17, 2011 8:42 pm

As of now, mid-April, it starts to be trickier to just hop in the car and ski. It’s still very much doable for at least a few more weeks, but where it starts to get dicey is in picking the right mountain.  At this time of year, not all Québec hills are created equal (and not all Québec hills are open).

Watch out for conditions like this...

First off, it’s pretty important to choose a hill that’s still open. A lot of ski hills still are, but some of the biggies have already shut down their lifts, closed down snowmaking, and said their wistful farewells to the 2010-2011 season. I highly recommend doing your research (or at least making a phone call) before heading out… There’s nothing more terrible than showing up at Tremblant at 9am after an early wake-up and a two hour drive, only to realize that hiking and window-shopping are the only sports currently available there. Not that there’s anything wrong with hiking and window-shopping… But you know what I mean.

So here’s the long and short of things as they stand right now, on April 17. Still open are Mont St-Sauveur, Mont Sutton, Owl’s Head, Mont Sainte-Anne and Le Massif de Charlevoix. Closed for the season are Mont Tremblant, Mont-Grand-Fonds, Stoneham, Mont Blanc, Ski Bromont and Mont Orford.

This list won’t be definitive for long though. Especially if we keep getting rained on all week, some hills may have to end their season earlier than they’d hoped for.

One great way to stay on top of which mountains are open, which are closed and which have enough open runs to be worth the trip, is to download the free iPhone app from SkiQuebec. It’s called SkiQC and it makes it really easy to check all your go-to hills to see which ones are still worth checking out. And it’s updated daily, so the info you get is pretty much guaranteed to be fresher than the list I’ve posted here.

Happy skiing, and good luck squeezing the last drops of fun out of the season!

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By Lloyd Langlois, April 14, 2011 11:29 pm

Back in October, UK-based Crystal Ski (one of Europe’s biggest ski tourism companies) ran a contest.  The winners were flown out to our neck of the woods, and got to spend five days skiing Tremblant, followed by a short stint experiencing Montréal.  The winners were down here last month, and seem to have had a blast.

I always find it cool to hear about our local hills from a complete outside perspective, so it was great to read the blog post they put up when they got back.  There’s no question this is a different ski experience than you’d get in the UK or Europe, so I wondered what type of comments they’d have about their time here…  Turns out the report was nothing short of glowing. Tremblant can be a magical place, both on and off the slopes, and it seems our out-of-town friends fell under the trembling mountain’s spell. I’m glad we were able to show them a good time.  You can check out the post here: http://ski-buzz.co.uk/2011/04/08/skiing-a-la-quebecoise/