As the final part of our week arrived, we might have felt some temptation to rest on our laurels, and give a break to our aching legs.  This would have been quite a hit to our egos, though, considering that we were surrounded by fit old people, zooming past us with no sign of fatigue.

I don’t know if all of Quebec is like this, or if Mt. Ste. Anne particularly is some kind of geriatric paradise, but we were astonished at the average age of the weekday clientele.  Everywhere we went — the lift lines, the cross country trails, the apres-ski bar scene — we were among the youngest people there.  Apparently retirees in Quebec don’t sit around on their patios playing shuffleboard.  One man who rode in the gondola with us told us that he’d skied 115 days the prior year.  The vast majority of them were better skiers than we were.  And once the lifts had closed, there they were again, dancing to the live music in the bar.

In any event, Wednesday dawned with bright sunshine and a brilliant blue sky, and the cross country trail system (described to us by a fellow NH tourist as the best in North America) beckoned.  So we set aside our downhill skis and took off into the woods, on beautifully groomed trails that seemed to travel into Narnia.

During our whole outing, we barely saw another person.  (This may have been because they heard us coming and hurriedly decided to try a different trail.)  The kids held up well, given that they had little to no experience on cross country skis.  Within the first ten minutes most of us were down to our shirtsleeves.  Our 8km loop was just the right distance for us to get in before returning to the lodge for lunch.  At that point most of the underage crew decided they’d had enough, and petitioned for a return trip to Quebec City.  Zoe and I decided to persevere on the ski trails, and managed to get in another 10km before the end of the day.  We even tried a blue (intermediate) trail, despite my reservations.  (I was more afraid of the downhill than the up, but apparently the laws of physics do not apply the same way in Canada, because I swear the loop was uphill both ways.)

The next day, of course, our legs were even more tired…but with several inches of snow having fallen the night before, the siren song of one more day on the mountain was too much to resist.  We didn’t exactly get an early start, but eventually we’d gotten everyone out the door.

If we thought we were in for an easier time than the day before, we were greatly mistaken.  We found that the mountain had groomed only a few trails, leaving the others with large mounds of powder scattered across them in uneven lumps.  After one run, our thighs were screaming.  (I have never before had the experience of having to stop and unzip my coat because I was sweating from the exertion of going DOWNHILL.)  Most of our crew called it a day by lunchtime.  Bob, Chris and I dragged ourselves back after a long break in the condo, and were glad we did.  After what we assumed would be our last run, we saw the lift was

still running at 4:05 — and hopped back on.  Given how the weather has been in NH, this may be our last skiing of the year, so we wanted to make the most of it.

 

After that, not much remained but to pack up, eat and drink all the remaining food in the house,  spend our last Canadian dollars at the grocery store (embarrassingly, we miscalculated and had to put something back) and prepare for the long drive home.  The kids are already talking about a repeat next year, and we adults didn’t say it was out of the question.