La Bête Golf Review

The name means the beast and the course spends eighteen holes earning it. Graham Cooke carved La Bête through hardwood forest at the foot of the Laurentians, and almost every hole plays up, down or across something: tee shots launched off ridges, approaches over rock faces, greens benched into hillsides with run-offs that turn a mid-iron miss into a lost hole. From the tips its 6,825 yards play far longer than the number, and the corridors are tight enough that the driver is a decision, not a default.

What keeps the round from feeling like punishment is the setting. Tremblant's peak fills the sky on the back nine, the fall colours are absurd, and the conditioning holds a resort polish from May to Thanksgiving. Peak-season rates north of a hundred and twenty dollars are real money for a bruising walk, which costs it a step on value, but as a mountain-golf experience in Quebec only its sister course across the river argues with it.