So I am sitting here at the Club Vacances Magog with the wind howling outside at 45+ km per hour and temperatures of about -15 to -20 degrees Celsius, windchill factor not included.

We drove up from Toronto last Saturday and it only took us about 6 hours to get to the town of Magog in Quebec's Eastern Townships. This area, l'Estrie, is located about 1 hour southeast of Montreal and very close to the Quebec - Vermont border. There are several fairly large lakes in the area: Lake Memphremagog being the largest, there is Lake Magog and there is also Lake Massawippi.

We had a pretty nice dinner Saturday night at a local restaurant in Magog called Jacko's. Sunday we took a nice drive around to places like North Hatley (a picturesque pioneer village), Lennoxville and we took a quick drive through the major city of the area, Sherbrooke.

Monday we went skiing at Mount Orford which is just outside the town of Magog. It is the largest one of the ski mountains in the area with an altitude of 986 meters and a vertical drop of 1770 feet. It was quite a nice mountain to ski on, but the top was covered in fog the whole day and it was very windy. We had to retreat mid-afternoonish because it got too cold.

Yesterday we went skiing at Owl's Head, towards the southern end of Lake Mephremagog. It also has a vertical of 1770 feet. Actually we enjoyed Owl's Head better than Orford and on Tuesdays and Wednesdays they offer incredible deals: $15 (Canadian!) for a whole day of skiing, apparently the best value for skiing in Eastern North America.

No skiing today though. It is simply too darn cold. The wind is howling and snow occasionally blows horizontally across the landscape. I had romantic notions of driving into Montreal today, but the cold weather would have ruined such an outing.

So we hope to catch a bit more skiing and maybe some sightseeing in the next 3 days. Winter arrived late here in the Eastern Townships of Quebec this year, but it arrived with a vengeance.