Mont Gleason - January 15, 2019

[Paul]

With a planned day off today, Mont Gleason was the mountain of choice for a mid-week getaway. I had received a message from a good friend of mine a few weeks ago that he was coming up from New York with his spouse for a week holiday to do some skiing in Quebec, and wanted to check out Mont Gleason. So we met up at the mountain at 9:00. Cloudy skies and a temperature of around -7 degrees. There was already a decent amount of cars in the parking lot, with a few school busses that had arrived with kids for their day out on the mountain. We got ready and hit the Quad chair at 9:30 to start the day. Only the Quad chair was spinning with the double chair and both t-bars remaining idle. The conditions were fantastic with groomed packed powder over a firm base. All but maybe 3 or 4 trails were open out of 20, and a couple of glades were accessible, however there were patrol signs advising of thin cover in those glades that were open. Wait time at the Quad was no more than 3-5 minutes at most.

The first run was down the Pierre Ling a nice and easy trail to warm up. The second run was a combo of the Cote de Georges and to the Cascades. After we moved over to the side of the mountain served by the double chair. The Ling, MRC Arthabaska, and the Gaudreau were well covered with no scraping at all. All the smaller connector trails were really good as well. 

The Pierre Ling:

The Cote de Georges:

The Ling:

The MRC d'Arthabaska:

After a great morning of skiing we took a break for lunch in the base chalet. There were quite a few people in the chalet but no line up to get anything and we were sitting and eating within minutes. Most of the crowd in the chalet were kids from school on their outing for the day. After lunch we went back out and skied the full length of the Cascades under the Quad, and made another tour across the mountain from one side to the other and closed out the day at 2:45 with 15 runs done. This season marks Gleason's 50th anniversary, and renovations to the chalet had been done during the past off season, and there are more improvements on the way for the 2019-20 season with the installation of a new Quad chair, and upgrades to the snowmaking system. The double line of t-bars will be seeing their last season this year as they will be removed and replaced with the new Quad. Today was another great day of skiing at Gleason! 

Here are a few more scenes from the day:

[Shane]

Beautiful mountain. Thanks for sharing your report Paul.

I like how there seems to be several narrower trails, like MRC d'Arthabaska and Cote de George.

What kind of changes were made in the base chalet?

[Ocean]

Sounds like a great outing, with great views too! I had not heard of Gleason before so great to hear about it!

[Paul]

6 hours ago, Shane said:

Beautiful mountain. Thanks for sharing your report Paul.

I like how there seems to be several narrower trails, like MRC d'Arthabaska and Cote de George.

What kind of changes were made in the base chalet?

In the chalet they had done some renovations and added 50 places. They also now have an access between the main chalet and the Desjardins room which I believe is their area to host events at the mountain.

They don't have any "super highway" trails. The widest trail is the Ling where at the top where they split the trail roughly in half with bumps and smooth grooming to ski on. I'll most likely go back again one more time and hopefully the t-bars are running to get a few laps on them before they are taken out later this summer.