In the run up to last Sun’s outing at La Montagne Coupée, I had said that it had been two years since our last visit there. It turns out I was mistaken, it had in fact been three years — we were last there in Jan 2011, when 22 of us turned out. It was cold and hard that day, with a recent thaw being followed by return to freezing temps. Part of the trail by the river had even been covered by ice.
This past Sun, ten Beaver Tailers made the trip to Montagne Coupée. We had all remembered to adjust our clocks for Daylight Saving Time and we arrived in unison at 10:30 am. We assembled at the “new” chalet — I use quotation marks because the woman selling us tickets mentioned that it has already been there six years! We were looking forward to much nicer ski 
conditions than our last visit three years ago. However, things were not as perfect as we had hoped. It had been sunny the day before with the temp getting up to, and perhaps a bit above, 0 C. It then plunged to -22 C overnight! The weather was otherwise quite pleasant as we got ready to ski, with the temp back up to -8 C, blue skies and low winds. Thanks to their top-notch snow grooming machines, they were able to make the best of the icy snow by grinding it up and reforming it into nice tracks. But the trails were definitely a bit harder and faster than we had expected.
We broke up into smaller groups with average speeds that ranged from very fast to “what’s the rush?”. But we all decided to start with the longest trail, the “9.2”. (At Montagne Coupée, the trail numbers are simply their distance in km.) This trail starts with a lot of descending, so we quickly learned that the hills were rapid, but with enough loose corn snow on them such that everyone found the descents manageable. This trail took us down to and alongside the Rivière l’Assomption — no ice sheets were covering the trail there this time around.
The 9.2 trail contains a 2.3 km loop that makes you double back to an earlier part of the trail and so you find yourself redoing the part of the trail by the river. As a result of the loop, the faster 
skiers came around behind the slower skiers and caught up to them. I can’t remember when this has ever happened before on a Sun outing, but all our skiers out that day met up on the trail AND we got a passer-by to take a group photo of us all. Sure, there were only ten of us, but it was still unprecedented!
We went on to complete the 9.2 (some of us did two loops) and then a smaller group of us tackled the 7.6 km. The trails at Montagne Coupée often go through open glades with 
picturesque old farm buildings surrounded by a sparkling blanket of snow. It has some very attractive scenery that is unlike anywhere else we usually go. Most of the group skied for 2 to 3 hours, with some covering up to 20+ km. None of us actually made it to trail 5.3, the one that goes by the namesake Montagne Coupée.
The new chalet was built when the monks who used to live at Oka moved to a new abbey built amongst the ski trails at Montagne Coupée. The chalet includes a store run and staffed by the monks where you can buy Oka cheese, jams and spreads they make at the abbey, as well as a selection of locally-produced “au terroir” foods. The store did quite well by us, as several of us stopped in to stock up.
It was a nice day at Montagne Coupée, especially for those of us who have come to appreciate the center over the years and had missed not going for so long. I sure hope it won’t take another three years before our next visit!