Lindsay Rose and Krista Alexander

Warning: the following article may induce feelings of excessive nostalgia and envy. If you are easily disturbed or offended, we urge you to turn the page now.

After countless months of planning, hearing stories of past trips and
stressing, family day weekend finally came. For some, that meant hitting up the
cottage with the fam, or maybe a weekend getaway to a long distance
destination. But for 14 grade 11 NT students, it was destined to be a weekend
we’d never forget. Four days at Mont Tremblant, QC with no parents, no cares,
and the only rule being not to use the family designated hot tub located on the
west mountain. We left on Thursday at midnight- most of us were planning to
sleep through the all-night bus ride. Wrong. If there was one rule we would
learn about Tremblant, it was that sleeping was not an option.

Day one, we groggily rolled up to the grocery store just outside Tremblant at 9
am that morning, and aimlessly wandered the aisles wondering what to buy to
feed ourselves for the next four days. Turns out we did even less eating than
we did sleeping. (Although I’m sure the Kraft Dinner and various liquids we
lived off of did our bodies “absolut” wonders.) By the time we were out of the
grocery store, back on the bus and in Tremblant, it was 10 am, and we were
being dropped off at our house in the mountain. Yes, you did read that
correctly – our house. Unlike previous years, we decided to break away from
Breakaway Tours and put our lives in the hands of S-Trip (voted best decision
made regarding the trip). The S-Trip staff were really friendly, and their
occasional drop-ins to make sure everyone still had all their limbs were always
eventful, such as hearing stories about the people they had sent home the night
before.

By the second day, twelve people had been sent home, one of which was a girl
they found naked in a ditch halfway up the mountain. Rough. The first night
there was no planned event, so we quickly made some new friends and had a small
get together where we sat around drinking hot chocolate in our pajamas,
braiding each other’s hair and singing along to One Direction. It was so much
fun that we were tempted to stay in from the Graffiti Party the next night and
do it all over again. But when our guide came by to drop off the shirts we were
in charge of designing ourselves, we quickly changed our minds. Maybe it was
fate, (we’re convinced it was planned) but the shirts only got dropped off with
10 minutes to spare before we had to catch the bus to leave for the event. It
was a blur of snips and cuts, and next thing we knew, our t-shirts now
resembled dishcloths. It was between wearing that, or something nice that would
get written all over, so we downed a little bit of liquid courage, put on our
fabric that was called a t-shirt, and boarded the bus to hell.

The rest of the trip was a blur, I guess exhaustion can erase one’s memory,
cause extreme nausea and encourage you to make awful choices (who knew?). Many
things were left behind (none of which were luggage, like last year), but
between finding phone numbers on our backs, avoiding the window of shame,
breaking into our house in the middle of the night because nobody had a key,
breaking into the wrong house, and having a family lunch in the village, the
fourteen of us who took the challenge of Tremblant made it out alive (somehow)
and bonded along the way. We’ll miss you Trembs, and don’t forget ladies and
gentleman, you have to be rad, to B-rad. Oh, and mystery York Mills boy, if you’re
out there somewhere and you ever see this – chocolate is always
the way to go. You made the right choice.