Le Massif Ski Resort Review Charlevoix Quebec, Canada

Le Massif is a ski resort located in Quebec Canada, about one hour north of Quebec City. It has the largest vertical drop in Eastern Canada, 307.6 skiable acres of terrain, and 52 trails. It receives an average annual snowfall of 212 inches, almost twenty feet! The lift infrastructure includes one high-speed gondola, three high-speed quads, and two smaller beginner lifts. I have been to Le Massif two times and it is an amazing mountain! I consider it to be in my top three favorite places I have ever skied!

All Mountain Terrain: 8/10

Beginner: 5/10

Le Massif is not a very beginner-friendly ski resort. They have a pretty nice learning area, but they only have one green circle that goes the whole way down the mountain. With only one true beginner trail it might get boring for new skiers. I would recommend any beginners to try Mont Sainte Anne first before going to Massif.

Intermediate: 9/10

Le massif is a great hill for intermediate skiers! There are many different blue trails that run all over the mountain. Runs like La Bouchard and La Gagnon are fairly steep, usually groomed, and will offer a good experience to any skier!

Advanced: 10/10

Le Massif offers spectacular advanced terrain! For some nice groomed steeps, check out L’Ecore and La Fenomene near the Malliard lift. For some fun tree skiing, head to the Camp Boule lift. For some challenging moguls, try runs like La 42, Le Mur, and La Pioche. The advanced terrain at Le Massif will appeal to many skiers of all sorts of levels.

Expert: 6/10

I found Le Massif to be slightly lacking in terms of extreme skiing. Some of their double black diamonds are pretty challenging, but they do not seem to give you the adrenaline rush that you get from skiing other double blacks. They only really have one extreme trail: La Charleviox – a triple black diamond! This is commonly regarded as one of the most challenging trails in all of Canada, and is sometimes used for training by the Canadian Olympic Team! The main problem is that it is almost never open to the public. I was talking to a local while on the chairlift and he claimed that it had never been open for four years! This is pretty unfortunate as I would have liked to try it sometime.

Snow Quality: 10/10

In terms of skiing in the East, you are not going to get any better than Le Massif! With nearly 20 feet of snow annually, this resort get plenty of snow. Le Massif is also father north than most other eastern resorts, so the snow is preserved for longer. When I was there we had a massive nor’easter blow in and dump 2 feet of snow! The next day was absolutely insane! Le Massif without a doubt has the best snow quality in North America east of the Rockies!

Views: 9/10

Le Massif provides absolutely breathtaking views of the St Lawrence and surrounding area! It almost seems as if you are skiing right down into the water! The views provided by this resort are a great reason to come here, even if you do not ski.

Lines: 9/10

Unless you come on a nice weekend, you usually will not have to wait very long to get on the lifts. On certain days the gondola line does tend to get pretty long, but this is easily avoided by taking one of the three other chairlifts instead. I have ran into minor lines at this place, but nothing compared to other resorts in Quebec such as Tremblant.

Terrain Park: 6/10

I am a bit of a beginner when it comes to the terrain park, but I do like to go in it to try stuff out. The terrain park here was not very impressive at all. It runs parallel to the bunny hill, and only contains about 15 features. It it has some decent jumps and rails, but definitely not the reason to come here.

Overall Rating: 8.5/10

Le Massif is an incredible resort that you should seriously consider visiting. I had a phenomenal time here and would suggest it to any intermediate to advanced skier looking for both a challenge and a fun time!

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Lego Car Dragged Behind a Bicycle!

One day, just for fun, I decided to make a few vehicles out of my old Legos. First I made a racecar, then I made a boat. Next, I came up with a cool idea. What would happen if I attached these vehicles to a string and dragged them behind my bicycle? How fast could they get going before they broke? Would they crash straight away? Right before testing this I came up with an even better idea. What would it look like if I found a way to mount my Gopro onto the vehicle?

The Racecar

For the first test, I dragged the Lego racecar (with the camera) down a paved road. I securely fastened the rope onto each end, turned on the camera, and off I went! The car was surprisingly going straight. As I picked up speed the roar of the car`s wheels grew louder. The car was drifting side to side, but was still staying pretty stable. As I came to the end of the road, I heard a crash! I looked back to see Lego pieces scattered everywhere and a camera in the ditch. Minor damages occurred to the Gopro case. I do not recommend that you try to do this on pavement, which is why I did the second two on grass.

First Attempt at the Boat

I figured it would be much better to try to drag the boat along the grass. I started out by putting a set of Lego plane wings. I started to pedal and gain some speed. Within just a couple of seconds, the boat crashed. Again the camera went flying and Lego pieces got scattered everywhere. This was a pretty pathetic attempt, so I decided to take off the wings all together.

Second Attempt at the Boat

The boat without the wings proved to be almost as effective as the racecar. As I started to pedal, the boat accelerated along the grass. It quickly picked up speed, gliding through the jungle of grass. It was going almost perfectly straight and looked great, but of course it eventually crashed. The boat hit a bump that was just too big and rolled over, spilling it`s contents all over the ground. This made for another very interesting video that I am very pleased with!

 

Exploring a Shipwreck in Lake Ontario!

In the summer of 2016, I was out boating on Lake Ontario. I had heard about a shipwreck, called The Juno, that lied a few hundred feet off the coastline near Bowmanville Ontario. I wanted to explore it. The problem was, the shipwreck lied 13 feet under water. I had no scuba suit and only a cheap snorkel, so it wouldn’t work. Instead I set up my Gopro and dropped it down underwater, creating some spectacular footage!

The Setup

A few months earlier, I had bought an accessory that would allow my Gopro to float above water. I then took a rope and tied it around a loophole included with the accessory. Obviously this would not sink, so I tied a heavy lock onto the rope (which can be seen in the video.) This allowed the camera to sink, but at the same time would assure that if the camera came undone, it would safely float back up to the surface

The Finding

I knew the general location of the wreck, but it was far harder to find than I thought. You would think that a ship over 100 feet long would be easy to find, but that was not the case. After about ten minutes of boating around I decided to check out a suspicious looking buoy, and that turned out to be it. The ship looked massive from above; so much larger than my little fishing boat! While securely in place, I started to film.

 

Juno shipwreck from space, courtesy of Google Earth

 

Exploring the Ship

In order to film, I would slowly lower the camera down until I would hit the bottom. It proved to be very difficult to film this way as I had absolutely no control over the direction the camera faced. Most of the footage was just me raising and lowering the camera. The unedited portion was over ten minutes long, but I only got about a minute of worthwhile content out of it.

The ship itself was very cool. It was absolutely covered in algae and zebra mussels. The propeller on this thing was enormous! Each blade had to be at least four feel long! I also got some neat shots of the boards that made up the deck, some broken off pieces, and even a post that looked like it could have been a lookout post or something.

After a bit of filming, it began to get very wavy. Our small boat started to violently bounce up and down, so I decided to call it a day. This was a really fun day, and I got some neat footage of a sunken ship!

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GoPro Attached to Kite (Fail)

On an incredibly windy day, just before a thunderstorm blew in, I decided to try flying a kite. The wind picked the kite up so fast and powerfully that I feared I might get picked up off the ground! I let out all 75 feet of the string and the kite still wanted to fly higher. This gave me a new idea. This idea would allow me to view the world around me from a different perspective. What would happen if I tried mounting my Gopro on my kite?

The Setup

Finding a secure way to mount a Gopro onto the kite proved to be difficult. I had to find a way that was secure, but at the same time gave the ideal view. I first tried hanging the Gopro with string, but quickly realized that the video would be far too shaky. I then decided to mount the Gopro directly onto one of the flexible fiberglass rods that make up the frame of the kite. This seemed like a great idea, but the camera would still not stay still. Instead, I combined the two methods to create a mechanism where a string is holding the top, and the fiberglass rod is threaded through the holes in the bottom. This seemed like a very safe and reliable system, until the crash.

The Failure

With the Gopro and the kite ready, I headed outside to fly the kite. I held the two handles and another person got the kite ready to throw up. Finally, the moment had come. The kite was thrown up and, like always, it took off like a plane. It got to the full height of 75 five feet before I noticed that something was terribly wrong. The Gopro was hanging from the string! Panic got the best of me, and I lost control of the kite. At near Mach speed, the kite turned and nosedived towards the Earth. I quickly sprinted over to the crash site. The kite had a few broken and missing parts, but the camera was intact and still recording!

The Video

The video is very shaky, but I found it to be interesting. I might not have gotten the high-quality birds-eye view that I wanted, but I am still pretty impressed with the results. This may be a huge failure, but it was worth it! I would not have discovered this unique way of filming had I not taken a bit of a risk. Smart risks are good to take; you should not be afraid to try something new.

Full Video – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOFL3CVBrp0