Mont Orford 1-22-26

[Ride Delaware ?]

This was actually my second trip to Orford, with the first one being Monday.  I had intended to make a trip report for both, but just didn’t have the time.  Both days were great, but the second was top tier, so that’s the one I’ll write about.

My wife’s family is from the North Country of NH, practically on the border with Canada, but they had grown up skiing the Balsams, and when it closed, had always thought Sunday River was the next closest resort.  I hadn’t been to Canada since 18’, so I had been looking for a new resort nearby that I might be able to add to the list.  I did some research and found that Orford was only about an hour twenty five away (assuming a smooth border crossing) as opposed to an hour forty to SR, so we decided to give it a try.  We went Monday and had a great day, so we decided to go back Thursday.

Certain parts of the North Country, especially in northern Coos County, are basically in a snow globe most of the winter.  Every day we were there it snowed a couple of inches.  They had a few clippers in Canada, so along with consistent cold temps, they were having one of the best early seasons for natural snowfall in the last decade.

We had a smooth border crossing and made it to the mountain right around 10:30.  The main lot, which holds a couple hundred cars, was mostly full and they had received 6 or so inches of fresh snow overnight.  The snow would continue intermittently throughout the day with another inch accumulating while we were there.  We snagged our lift tickets for $80 CAD ($55 US) and headed out.

I don’t know if this is standard practice for them, but they had closed down the main lift and peak, Mont Orford, Monday-Wednesday for resurfacing.  This peak allows you to ride their entire 1,933 ft vertical in one run off a very nice chondola.  It had some long cruisers and some nice steeps as well.  They had a mix of natural ungroomed trails along with a healthy dose of groomed trails.  There were plenty of freshies throughout the day no matter what trail you were on.  The fresh snow was light, fluffy, and gave you that great floating sensation.  The other lifts had less steep cruisers.  There were lots of consistent pitch woods shots filled with freshies to be found everywhere.  The unmarked woods were better than most of the marked glades, which were mostly narrow and steep one or two route luge runs, but the coverage was deep on everything.  There were definitely some sudden unmarked cliff drops in there, so you needed to be careful.  Head on a swivel as they say.

The lifts were ski on ski off all day.  There were some empty chairs, but overall almost every chair had at least one person on it. The main lifts out of the base are all fairly modern and had the annoying loading carpets.  Luckily most people there knew how to use them and there weren’t many stops.  The lodge was nice and modern but was under construction.  The ski resort itself is more like a day area with some vacation homes starting to pop up on the access road.  The closest city is Sherbrooke, but I didn’t get the feeling that the place gets overrun on the weekends either

We logged about 4 nonstops hours on Thursday.  The legs were definitely spent and sore the rest of the night.  I am definitely glad we found the place, and it’s significantly cheaper than 90% of US ski areas, even the cheaper ones.  The ski area food is better and cheaper and the ski school looks to be cheaper too, assuming you can find someone that speaks English well enough.

That puts my Eastern Townships list at 3 including Bromont and Sutton.  I could see Owls Head from one of the lifts, and I’m told it’s much more old school, but there’s a lake in the way, and even though “it isn’t far, you can’t get there from here”.  It would be hard to justify the extra 40 minutes of drive time, but I’m sure I’ll do it this year or next.   I’ve still had my best east coast days at Charlevoix, but the eastern townships are definitely worth a day or two if you’re already up there and looking for something new.

As always, pics below:

[RidgeRacer]

Cool looking place. Very New England.