(Beaupré) Friday morning, snow and wind sweep Quebec. On the radio, it is announced that the school boards are closed. It’s time to go. Direction: Mont-Sainte-Anne.
We take the Dufferin-Montmorency highway, even emptier than usual. About 40 minutes later, it appears in the blizzard, this mountain which has been causing ink to flow for years to the point of being renamed Mont-Sainte-Panne by certain detractors.
The exercise of The Press is simple this morning: put on your skis and hurtle down the famous slopes of this resort which prides itself on offering the third vertical drop in the province, but also talk to regulars who have chosen to ski in the mountains despite the controversies.
“There is nothing comparable to Mont-Sainte-Anne in the Quebec region in terms of the diversity of trails,” says Andrée, a retiree she met on the L’Express du Sud quadruple chairlift. Even the Massif, for me, is not the same. »
“Of course, the gondolas have to work, but you know, in all honesty we are used to them, they have had problems for years. »
The fall on December 10 of a gondola, or a gondola as we say in Venice, led to the closure of the station. The Régie du bâtiment du Québec gave the green light to the reopening on January 7, but banned the operation of the famous Shooting Star.
PHOTO GABRIEL BÉLAND, THE PRESS
The Shooting Star, which allows you to reach the summit from the base, is closed for the third time in four years.
The gondola closed, skiers must therefore take two chairlifts at the start of the day to reach the summit, L’Express du Sud then La Tortue.
In the queue for L’Express du Sud at 8:45 a.m., 15 minutes before opening, there are powder enthusiasts. They want to be the first to hit virgin slopes. Regulars say they have taken time off.
” My boss seemed okay with the concept in November, but today he finds it less funny”, laughs a skier.
At the top, you must then take La Tortue. The quadruple chairlift has seen better days since its inauguration in 1986. Normally, L’Étoile filante – the gondola – does the work of these two lifts and takes skiers to the very top.
“Yeah, it’s not famous, having to take two chairs to get to the top, but in truth, you don’t have to do it often in your day”, says Pierre, met in La Tortue.
On the slopes, skiers are thrilled. Powder snow like Friday morning is extremely rare. Some fall when their binding gives way under the weight of the snow and disappears in a cloud of powder snow.
Boycott calls are on the rise
Friday, when we called customer service to buy a ticket – $109.46, with tax! –, the operator apologized for the wait.
“With the snow coming, they all want to re-subscribe,” says the employee. The Mont-Sainte-Anne season pass now costs $1,818 plus tax (it’s cheaper if purchased earlier in the year).
The resort’s disastrous start to the season prompted skiers to cancel their subscriptions. Some are even calling for a boycott of the mountain to force the current manager, Resorts of the Canadian Rockies (RCR), to sell the mountain.
“The MSA is my favorite mountain, but if you want that to change, stop writing here and take concrete action to change things: ski somewhere else,” Étienne recently wrote in a Facebook group of dissatisfied skiers.
A recent Léger poll commissioned by the group Les Amis du Mont-Sainte-Anne – which campaigns for a change of manager – reveals that 80% of respondents in the greater Quebec City region are in favor of government intervention to force a change of manager.1.
Before leaving on Friday, a quick phone call to Jean-Luc Brassard. The living legend of moguls knows Quebec resorts well. We want to understand why Mont-Sainte-Anne, perhaps more than any resort in Quebec, arouses so much passion.
“Sainte-Anne’s potential is extraordinary. There is everything to do, ”says Brassard at the end of the line, in reference to this generous elevation, this breathtaking view of the river and this proximity to Quebec.
According to Jean-Luc Brassard, the expert sector of Sainte-Anne remains its main attraction, the trump card up its sleeve.
The MSA is still perceived as the mountain in Quebec with the steepest groomed trails. All the left side, the Saint-Laurent, the S, the Crête… These are tracks in which you cannot let yourself go. There have already been Canadian championships in these tracks.
Jean-Luc Brassard
Let’s talk about the St. Lawrence, a steep trail that, when it’s packed with snow like Friday, makes your thighs suddenly want to quit and rush off to Punta Cana.
old tunes
But despite these good words, and despite the undeniable beauty of the mountain, Brassard shares many of the criticisms of the Friends of Mont-Sainte-Anne. The resort has “lost its luster”, the lifts are aging, investments are rare…
“The new quad chairlift serves the expert sector. But in a funny decision that is difficult to explain, they changed the orientation of the old chairlift. It now takes a cross-country pilgrimage to get to the expert trails. »
He also talks about the famous Chalet de la Crête, abandoned for 10 years. “There is an extraordinary panorama there! “Laments Brassard.
The old boarded-up chalet looks bad at the top. The station has installed signs to prohibit access, to warn recalcitrants of the presence of cameras. The scene looks like an abandoned seaside resort.
PHOTO GABRIEL BÉLAND, THE PRESS
The old Crête chalet was closed in 2012. Since then, it has been abandoned.
And the base chalet, from where the journalist writes this text, does not err on the side of modernism either. But it’s jam-packed today, proof that despite scandals, a falling gondola and calls for a boycott, this unique mountain remains magnetic. Especially on a powder day.
Jean-Luc Brassard is convinced that RCR and the government are condemned to agree on a reinvestment plan. It is the entire region of Quebec and even Le Massif which, according to him, is suffering from the status quo. For example, he dreams of a hotel at the top to allow RCR to make the resort profitable and reinvest.
“Many tourists have left Quebec in recent years. We can’t let Sainte-Anne go like this. »
1. Survey conducted with a panel of Léger Internet users. Data collection took place from January 6 to 8, 2023 inclusively, with 502 residents.
Three events in four years
The December 10 event is the third in four years on L’Étoile filante. In 2020, a sudden stop caused 21 injuries. “A man was outright kicked out of the cabin. He was hanging upside down. We tried to hold him back. He managed to get back into the cabin. I think he had a narrow escape that day,” skier Jacques Hardy, who was in L’Étoile filante that day, recently recalled.
RCR concluded that the event was caused by a “voltage variation on the power supply” from Hydro-Quebec.
The gondola had reopened on 1er March 2020 to close on March 11 after a similar episode, which however did not cause any injuries. It then remained closed for a year.
RCR had invested 1.5 million in the gondola in August 2021. It had reopened in December, then operated without major events all past season. Then on December 10, a gondola fell. The lift has been closed since that day, with no scheduled reopening date.