Les Routes Blanches takes skiers back in time, carving cross-country trails through Quebec over multiple days.

I never understood cross-country skiing as a kid. The skis felt awkward, the circular loop trails pointless and the vistas of frozen swamps unspectacular at best. Cross-country skiing felt like downhill’s poor cousin.

So it was with some trepidation that I floated the idea of a three-day cross-country ski trip to my teenaged son, Theo. The proposed expedition – a village-to-village guided tour through the Laurentian mountains north of Montreal – sounded a lot more adventurous than the sorties of my youth and I knew that the topography might offer him just enough thrills to remain engaged.

A winter ski trip to Banff is a chance to explore this overvisited park in peace

Theo was

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