Where the Wild Things Are — and Where You Should Be Too

Farouche Tremblant Review: Where the Wild Things Are

Are you looking for an eco-luxury retreat in the Laurentians where you can actually feel the wilderness instead of just looking at it through a window? Well I recently stayed at the Farouche Tremblant and I’m here to share with you why I think this is one of the best eco-escapes in all of Canada. 

And I almost missed it! 

When I arrived at Faroche Tremblant I didn’t know I was even there and drove right past the entrance. There is no grand sign at Farouche entrance. No resort gates, no valet lane, no hint from the road that you are about to turn off into one of the most remarkable places I have stayed in my years of travel. 

Just a quiet turn that leads you down a the parking lot— and then, the Farm Store pops up and you find yourself on a Nordic farm on the banks of the Riviere du Diable. Walking in to the entrance a glass-walled farm-bar with a barista station welcomes you alongside a landscape that feels utterly, deliberately untouched.

Check in took me minutes and I was quickly unloading my Mitsubishi and heading straight to my cedar A-frame cabins. Farouche means ‘wild’ in French. The name is not a marketing decision. It is a description.

I stayed two nights in June 2026, hosted by Tourism Laurentians, as part of a broader Laurentians press trip. What I expected: good eco-accommodation with interesting programming. What I got: the most quietly transformative stay I have had in years.

Quick Facts: Farouche Tremblant at a Glance

Property Overview:

Farouche Tremblant A Frame Cabins

I was assigned the Johannsen refuge — one of seven individually named A-frames on the property, set back toward the riverside of the farm. The path to it was framed with purple lupins that were filled with fluttering bees. The A-frame itself stood cleanly against the forest behind it — a storybook shape in a storybook setting — and my first thought was that I had seen this image a hundred times in travel editorial photography and never quite believed it could look exactly that perfect in person. It did.

Inside, the cabin is entirely wood. Warm planking runs floor to ceiling. The king-size memory foam bed is piled with lush pillows. A basket light hangs from the peak of the A-frame, casting soft, warm, golden light across the whole space. Two sconces sit on either side of the bed — enough light to read by, gentle enough to fall asleep to. A gas fireplace with a thermostat mode kept the cabin at exactly the right temperature without any fussing. An in-room coffee maker for the morning. 

The Johannsen felt like an owl’s nest: a small, warm, perfectly contained space that exists for the specific purpose of making you feel safe, held, and deeply at rest.

The Bathrooms at Farouche 

The A-Frame cabins do not come with an attached bathroom, but they are only short walk away. Upon check in you’ll get your key to your private bathroom and upon unlocking it you’ll discover a fully-equipped bathroom with a large accessible luxury shower, full towel service, and all the toiletries you need. (Including some you may have forgotten) This space is exclusively yours and not shared with other guests, meaning you can leave all of your toiletries and items unpacked and on the shelf. 

I will admit that when I first registered ‘detached bathroom,’ I felt a flicker of hesitation. Then I arrived, did the short walk through and understood immediately why it is designed this way. That brief transition between the cabin and the bathroom — walking through the dark, hearing the frogs start up, feeling the cool air — is not an inconvenience. It is part of the experience of being here. It reminds you that you are outside, that the wild is nearby, that this is not a retreat not hotel room.

The Food: Farouche’s Farm-to-Table Philosophy

Farouche’s approach to food follows what the property calls ‘simplicite, fraicheur et terroir’ — simplicity, freshness, and the land. Every item on the La Buvette menu connects back to what grows on the farm or what comes from regional Laurentian producers. This is not a slogan. You taste it.

The Best Breakfast in the World

I do not use that phrase lightly. I have had many breakfasts in many countries. The farm breakfast at La Buvette was one of the best breakfast buffets I’ve ever had. Nope, it was actually THE best!

It is a full buffet, (included in the room rate), served between 9:00 and 10:30 AM in the La Buvette atrium. On the morning I visited the buffet included: a barista coffee station (proper, excellent coffee), fresh-pressed juices, a make-your-own omelette station using eggs from Farouche’s own chickens, ( the yolks were a deep, rich, almost burnt-amber gold that you simply do not see in grocery store eggs) croissants and fresh pastries, a dedicated gluten-free bread and cereal bar stocked with cranberries, raisins, nuts, and seeds, and overnight oats with chia pudding topped with edible flowers. Talk about nutritious and fueling food. 

I made two omelettes. I loaded a plate with everything else as well. I sat at the window and looked out at the farm while the morning opened slowly around me. I was not in a rush to go anywhere. That, I realized, is the real gift of Farouche: it gives you back the lost art of having nowhere to be.

Dinner at La Buvette

On my first evening, I settled into a long pine table inside the soaring glass atrium of La Buvette — the farm-bar that anchors the property — and ordered the Planche collation: crudites, house-made hummus, nuts, chips, and olives, accompanied by a glass from Farouche’s extensive, locally sourced drinks list. The menu spans pages of Laurentian wines, Quebec craft beers, and a full mocktail selection, including house-made kombucha and elderflower tonic. Outside the glass walls, the farm slipped into darkness while I ate. Overhead, the first stars appeared.

Cooking Over a Campfire

On my second night, I became my own chef.

Farouche’s on site farm store carries an ever-changing selection of local produce, meats, and provisions sourced from the farm and from regional suppliers. I picked up beet and pork sausages, asparagus, garlic, onions, and potatoes — all local, all beautiful — and carried everything back to my cabin, where Farouche’s full outdoor cooking kit was waiting: pots, pans, utensils, a grill grate, everything down to a dish bin. (They do the washing up for you. They take the bin, they return it clean. It is the detail that makes the experience glamping and not camping, knowing how well you’re taken  care of.)

I cooked over the outdoor BBQ setup at the cabin while the forest settled around me. Then I took my plate and sat by the campfire I’d built, and ate in the dark while the owls started calling across the property. This is not glamping in the sense of a luxury hotel that happens to be in a tent. This is something more intentional — a considered, unhurried way of being outside that reconnects you to the act of cooking, eating, and sitting still.

What to Do at Farouche Tremblant

Paddleboarding the Riviere du Diable

The Riviere du Diable — the Devil’s River — runs along the edge of the Farouche property, and from the property’s dock you can launch a paddleboard directly into it. Farouche provides Taiga boards (a proudly Quebec brand) and all required equipment. Life jackets are mandatory. 

I paddled for an hour and a half on my second afternoon. I headed upstream against the undercurrent — you feel it working against you when you stop paddling, a steady, quiet push — then let the current carry me back. The river meanders through uninterrupted wilderness. No roads visible from the water. No other people. Just the sound of the birds overhead, the occasional plop of something diving beneath the surface, water trickling over a submerged log, and the changing landscape around each bend: a sweep of red sand beach, towering trees with roots trailing into the water, overhanging branches that brushed my shoulders as I passed beneath them.

I kept thinking: I am paddling through a painting. It was still. That composed. That perfect.

When I sent videos home to my family, I expected them to react to the visual — the A-frames, the wildflowers, the river. Every single response mentioned the audio. ‘That sounds unbelievable.’ The frogs. The crickets. The wind through the trees. The water. Farouche’s most remarkable feature is not something you can photograph.

Mont-Tremblant National Park — Five Minutes Away

Farouche sits five minutes from the entrance to Mont-Tremblant National Park — Quebec’s oldest protected area, 1,510 square kilometres of Boreal forest, 400-plus lakes, and over 200 kilometres of trails. This proximity is one of Farouche’s most significant assets and genuinely changes what is possible in a two-night stay.

On my second morning, I hiked in the park with a D-Tour guide for five hours. We covered La Corniche and La Roche — two linked intermediate trails in the La Diable sector with panoramic views over the glacial Lac Monroe valley, two lookout points, and a waterfall. The guide wove in the river’s history, the Algonquin land context, and the geology of the Laurentian Hills (a billion years old; originally as tall as the Himalayas; shaped by successive glaciations into the ancient, rounded landscape you see today). I returned to my cabin at three o’clock in the afternoon, took a twenty-minute restorative nap, and then went paddleboarding. That is what it is to be based at Farouche.

Additional park activities bookable through Farouche include electric fatbike tours (three hours, exploring the park’s secondary roads), guided fly fishing on the Riviere du Diable (a regulated provincial fishing permit is required), and canoeing the river’s meanders.

The Nordic Bath

The Bain Nordique sits on the rooftop of the Paddleshack building — a cedar-lined, bromine-treated hot tub with an unobstructed view of the sky. Guests receive 60 minutes of access per day, reservable via a QR code on arrival. (Book your slot as soon as you check in, particularly in peak season.)

I arrived at the Nordic bath at nine o’clock on my second evening. I had showered off the campfire smoke, changed into my warmest pajamas (June nights in the Laurentians are warmer than you’d expect — probably fifteen degrees — so the transition back to the cabin was perfectly comfortable), and walked up to the roof. With only two guests on the property that night, I had the bath entirely to myself.

I soaked for the full hour under a sky full of stars. My legs, which had hiked for five hours and paddled for ninety minutes, recovered completely. 

Solo Yoga at Dawn

On my second morning, before breakfast, I walked down to the riverside dock and unrolled my mat for twenty minutes of solo practice overlooking the Riviere du Diable. The river was glassy. The birds were just beginning. I have practiced yoga in many settings, and I can tell you that there is simply no comparison to practicing outside in a space like this — the kind of uninterrupted, genuinely quiet wilderness that most people have to work very hard to reach.

Farouche also offers weekly outdoor group yoga classes on wooden platforms between the forest and the river (Hatha, Vinyasa, and Yin, rotating with the seasons and lunar cycle), private yoga sessions bookable through the property, and retreat packages that combine yoga with sound healing and wellness treatments. If I had had more time, I would have booked a private session with one of the resident practitioners.

Wellness Treatments

Farouche’s wellness programming is delivered by three named practitioners: Annie Prefontaine (madérothérapie and therapeutic massage, working through her practice Retraite Rebelle), Sara Moreau (vibrational sound healing with a giant drum), and Lynne Taillefer (founder of Mamalynne Yoga, specializing in Ayurvedic health consultations and holistic yoga). Sessions take place in a prospector tent in the heart of the farm — open air, surrounded by the sounds of the property.

I did not book a treatment during my stay. It is the one thing I would do differently if I returned — which I intend to.

The Real Farouche: What You Cannot See 

On my first night at Farouche, I did something I never do. I left the windows open. I did not put in my earplugs. I did not run a white noise app. I turned off everything that usually stands between me and whatever is outside, and I lay in my nest of pillows in the golden light of the cabin and I listened.

The frogs started first. Then the crickets. Then, sometime around nine o’clock, the owls — two of them, calling back and forth across the property in that unhurried, conversational way owls do when they are simply talking to each other. Under all of it, the river. Constant, low, threading through everything else.

I slept for twelve hours. I cannot remember the last time I slept for twelve hours.

That is what you come here for. Not the Instagram shot of the A-frame (though you will get that too, and it will be perfect). Not the breakfast (though it will be the best of your life). Not even the paddleboard moment, as transcendent as it is. You come here to sit in an Adirondack chair by a campfire with an owl calling overhead and realize that this — just this, nothing else added — is enough. That you, in fact, are enough. And that you forgot that somewhere along the way and needed a Nordic farm on the banks of the Devil’s River to remind you.

What I Loved

• The unexpected moments of stillness. Sitting by the campfire listening to owls call back and forth. The nest-like coziness of the cabin — that warm, golden, held feeling, like a child curling into their mom after a long day at school. It was holistically, quietly transformative.
• That farm breakfast. The eggs with their deep gold yolks. The edible flowers on the overnight oats. The barista coffee. The unhurried hour at the window watching the farm wake up. It was the best breakfast I have ever had.
• Paddleboarding on the Riviere du Diable. The solitude. The painting-stillness of the water. The way every bend revealed something new. I wanted to stay out there for the rest of the day.
• The proximity to Mont-Tremblant National Park. Five minutes to the park entrance changes everything. It makes a two-night stay at Farouche into a genuine wilderness adventure base, not just a pretty place to sleep.
• The cooking experience. Farm-store provisions, outdoor cooking kit, campfire, dish service. It sounds simple. It felt extraordinary.
• The Nordic bath under the stars. Solo. One hour. Full recovery. The most luxurious Tuesday of my life.
• The sounds. Always the sounds.

What I’d Change

• I wished I had more time to book the wellness treatments. The yoga, the sound healing, the Ayurvedic consultations — Farouche’s programming in this area is genuinely impressive and I did not leave enough space for it. Add at least half a day in your itinerary if this matters to you.
• The bathroom door handle was slightly sticky. A minor note. Easily fixed.
• Mosquitoes in June. They were enthusiastic. Pack repellent spray, wear long sleeves and long pants at the campfire, and consider mosquito-repellent clothing. Building the fire helps. The Thermacell I brought was not functioning properly on this trip, which did not help. Farouche’s coil repellents are available on-site.
• The car parking is a short walk from the cabins — there are no vehicle-to-door drop-offs, which keeps the property serene and car-free. I understood immediately why it is designed this way. 

Everything You Need to Know Before You Book

Should You Stay at Farouche Tremblant?

Yes. Without qualification.

If you are the kind of traveller who has been searching for a place that feels genuinely, uncomplicatedly wild — where the experience is not performed for you but simply exists, fully formed, in the landscape around you — Farouche is it.

It is not for everyone. If you need a hotel bar, a spa with twelve treatment rooms, a concierge who can get you a restaurant reservation, and a room where the bathroom is ten steps from the bed, there are many excellent places to stay in the Laurentians that will serve you better. Farouche will not pretend to be those things.

What it is: a small, carefully tended refuge where a Nordic farm meets Boreal wilderness, where the frogs put you to sleep and the farm eggs wake you up, where you can spend a morning in the national park and an evening by a campfire and a night in a cedar nest under a sky full of stars, and where the loudest thing you will hear is nature — unhurried, unfiltered, uninterrupted — doing what it has always done.

This experience was made possible thanks to Tourism Laurentians. As always, all opinions, stories, and recommendations are 100% my own.

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