Conditions Report
Report from Tuesday, February 20th
At only a one-hour drive from Montreal, Bromont is one of the closest major ski areas to Quebec’s biggest city and offers the largest amount of night skiing terrain in North America. While it may not receive as much snowfall as some of the other Quebec resorts, it makes up for that with some of the best snowmaking systems in the province, great high-speed lifts, and an ongoing $122 million capital investment project that started in 2017.
When I visited Bromont yesterday, unfortunately, only 63% of their terrain was open. Yet, being one of the largest resorts in Quebec, they could still offer 50+ trails across 5/7 mountain peaks. For most of the day, I found myself gravitating to where the crowds did not, and that seemed to be Chairs 5 & 6, which conveniently served the two separate faces of Lakeview and Épinettes and offered an evenly dispersed variety of trail options.
After all the groomed terrain inevitably got skied out by the end of the morning, I worried about the prospect of getting somewhat bored of the mountain. Unfortunately, Bromont saw warmer weather a week or so back, which took a major hit on its base, eliminating much of its gladed terrain and steep ungroomed runs that I would typically head towards.
But then, all of a sudden, at around 1 pm, the groomers came out. I had never seen this practice until now, but midday, the groomers were out, and one by one, Bromont mountain staff on snowmobiles roped off runs and re-groomed the trails. They didn’t do all the trails, but by around 3 pm, three snowcats had covered half a dozen top-to-bottom runs, with a new round of fresh tracks available to everyone. As they went on each trail one by one, skiers like myself followed their path and lapped each trail a couple of times before they completed the next one.
It was terrific, and my only thought was that I wish more resorts did this, or rather, why don’t more resorts do this? I know Bromont and many other resorts offering night skiing will often implement this practice in the evenings, but I have never heard of another ski resort doing it midday. It completely changed my outlook on the afternoon of skiing and kept me eager and excited to continue throughout the day.
Bromont is the most expensive ski resort in the Eastern Townships region of Quebec, but I found a great way to circumvent this problem. While spending the past four days in the Eastern Townships, I have been using the L’Est Go Pass, which gives users the option to ski at any of the four ski resorts in the Eastern Townships (Bromont, Mont Sutton, Mont Orford, and Owl’s Head) for one rate (which decreases the more days you add on the pass) with no blackout dates. For example, an adult weekend lift ticket on Bromont’s website goes for $95 CAD. I was only paying $74 CAD or a mere $54 USD as someone who now lives in the US. That is a steal in my books compared to most resorts of equal size nowadays.
Current Conditions
Weather Outlook
Unfortunately, next week’s weather outlook is all over the place for Bromont. Highs above freezing will bring the possibility of rain and melting, while quick and sudden temperatures drop within 12 hours will bring anything that is left into a fast freeze. Hopefully, the forecasted snow can bring a fresh surface to soften the icy base below it.
Additional Photos
Quick Facts & History
- Date Opened: 1964
- Multi-Destination Pass: L’Est Go
- Number of Trails: 141
- Skiable Acres: 450
- Vertical Drop: 1175
- Base Elevation: 630
- Summit Elevation: 1805
- Number of Lifts: 11
- Night Skiing: Yes (84 trails & 12 glades)
- Other Activities:
- ski touring
- snowshoeing
A random thing I loved about Bromont is the way they have gone about naming their trails. At Bromont, all of their trails are named after cities or towns in various regions in North America. While I initially thought the move to do that was odd, I quickly realized several advantages of this. When trails are named after things you are already familiar with, it is much easier to remember and refer back to them. I found myself quickly doing way more than I otherwise would at a ski resort I was unfamiliar with. They also grouped the city/town names into the geographic regions they are from – the front side and Mont Soleil are all Quebec, the Lake side is all the East Coast of the US, the Épinettes peak is all Ontario, etc. This organizational strategy made it easy to quickly recall where a specific trail may be on the mountain without thinking. I also enjoyed this naming system because it is always fun to see what type of trail each city is. You have to wonder how they went about deciding which places got which type of trails (my hometown of Toronto was a lovely, long, easy green, so what are they inferring?).
Overall, I had a great time at Bromont and will return soon.
For more information, check out Bromont’s website.
