Memories of Mayhem

You know what I remember about the first trip? There were only Eighteen trails open. That's right. It was such a small number of trails that I just wrote out the number instead of writing "18".

As you know, Tremblant has 94 trails these days. In fact, just today they opened them all up for the first time in a while. However, back on December 10th, 1999, Tremblant had only 18 trails open. Perhaps that was one of the reasons Scotty wanted to go to Gore. Perhaps he thought there would be more trails open.

Regardless of Scotty's true intentions, I would like to emphasize that we only had 18 trails open. There hadn't been a lot of snow so far in the season and the coverage wasn't that great. You had to take the Telecabine gondola all the way to the top, not to ski down to the bottom, but to ski down to the TGV lift. All trails were only accessible off of the TGV lift. There was no North Side open, no bottom of the South Side open and Versant Soleil and Le Edge were still just a gleam in Intrawest's eye. Since everyone was skiing the exact same trails, they all became quite crowded, very quickly. When your day of skiing was done, you took the TGV to the top of the mountain and then took the gondola back down to the village. Clearly, this was not an ideal situation and it made the lift lines very long. Sometimes, we waited upwards of 45 minutes in line to catch a chair.

If that last paragraph sounded like "when I was younger we walked to school uphill both ways in the snow", well, I guess it did. Things were different back then as we keep stressing in recent posts.

Now, here's where this gets really crazy. 18 Trails. Long lines. Lots of people clogging the trails... and yet, we still LOVED this place and couldn't wait to get back there. If that doesn't explain the magic of Tremblant, I don't know what does.

This post isn't to romantically talk about the good old days. While they certainly were good old days, the mountain and the company has only gotten better with each passing year. I look back on Operation Mayhem with fondness and respect, but I always anxiously await the next trip, because I know it will be the best one yet.