Skiing, snowboarding and snowshoeing at Le Massif

Every October, just as the cycling season comes to a close, the registration package arrives in the mail and questions and challenges from marathon-obsessed friends start flying: Have you registered? Have you started training? What food are you bringing? I bet my pack will weigh less than your pack! Phone calls and e-mails criss-cross until the second weekend in February, when we meet again on the start line.

This year our little group will be going for our fifth gold, but that’s not the end of the story. We can look forward to a lifetime of challenge in this sport, and an annual chance to spend time with old friends.

Hey! Isn’t that just what my coach told me? “Skiing is for life.” ≈ Stephanie Edwards has completed the marathon’s Coureur de Bois category six years in a row.

DATE: February 11 and 12, 2006. LOCATION: Gatineau to Lachute with an overnight stop in Montebello.

DISTANCE: 160 kilometres divided into 10 sections. Ski as little as 15 kilometres or up to the full distance.

MINI-CSM: Ski one section of the trail, youth under 18 free.

SPECIAL FOR THE 40TH EDITION: Fairmont Le Chateau Montebello family fun day on Saturday, February 11. Kids can ski the hotel trails, swim and lunch at the hotel.

Register Online at www.csm-mcs.com and save $5.

BY HEATHER LANE AND NICHOLAS LANE

MARCH BREAK CAN boost parental anxiety, particularly if you have teenagers. That’s why last year I took my 13-year-old son for a full blast of snowboarding and skiing. The plan was simple. We would ski at Le Massif (an awesome site east of Quebec City), and then snowshoe into a cabin in the Sentier des Cap de Charlevoix – a provincial park five minutes from the ski hill.

No condos, hotels, hot tubs or snow babes in bikinis, Le Massif is privately owned, laid back, unpretentious.

Yes, snowshoeing for 1 1/2 hours after a full day of skiing is exhausting, but if you like to ski hard and sleep cheap, for $22 you get a somewhat drafty 10-person log cabin with a loft and a wood stove. If you are not in a big group, you may end up sharing your accommodation with other people. Protocol is basic. Just throw down your sleeping mat, and stake out your territory on the loft floor.

The view from the Le Massif summit out over the St. Lawrence estuary, framed by the Laurentian Mountains, is so spectacular you will want to postpone your descent and pull out a camera. Skiable terrain spreads over 114 hectares, and 75 per cent of the runs are

groomed. The rest are left natural for powder days, and that potential is high, with about six metres of natural snowfall annually. Nicholas and I discovered the best powder runs were in the glades and underneath the main lift chair.

This is serious skiing. The vertical drop is 758 metres, so no wonder the Canadian national training centre for the women’s downhill is at Le Massif. On the fun end of the spectrum, you’ll find a small park for snowboarders and freestyle skiers, which my son really enjoyed. For a former western ski bum like myself, Le Massif rekindled my passion, as Nicholas and I spent most of our time on the abundant black diamond and double black diamond runs.

The skiing was great, but cabin life proved full of adventure too.

Our trip was intended to give Nicholas snowboarding experience on tougher terrain than our local ski hill, but the real challenges came from our nightly treks into the cabin on snowshoes. After one day of fierce wind gusts at the ski hill, snowshoeing in to our cabin meant breaking trail with snow up to your knees. All we could see dimly on our slow, laboured uphill trudge to the cabin was trees arching to the breaking point. At times during that seemingly endless hike against blasting wind, I feared for the safety of my child. Frostbite is an ever-present danger in high winds, but we safely reached the warm cabin and gorged ourselves on a hearty supper.

The cabin provided lots of laughs, but zero comforts of home. The first