Ski all day. Then get in the hot tub.

Winter is where a luxury rental earns the word, or does not. Everyone arrives at once, everything is wet, and a group of ten wants hot water, somewhere to put boots, and somewhere to sit that is not the same room as the boots.

Here there is laundry on site, more than one kitchen, several bedrooms with their own gas fireplace and television, three separate places to sit, and a rooftop hot tub with the ridge in front of it. The great room fire lights from a switch. The dining table takes the whole group at once.

Christmas is one of the most asked-for weeks of the year here, and it is easy to see why. The long timber table seats twelve, so the whole family eats at one table instead of two, which matters to anyone who has spent years splitting the holidays between houses. The kitchen is big enough to cook a full holiday dinner without sending anyone out of it. Radiant heat runs under the floors, the fires are lit, and the eighteen-foot glass in the great room turns a snowfall into something to watch.

After dinner, go up to the roof. The hot tub and the gas fire bowl are used all winter, and sitting in hot water with snow coming down and the escarpment dark on the horizon is the part of the week people talk about afterwards. New Year’s Eve works the same way, just later. And a stay does not have to include Christmas Day itself: arriving on Boxing Day and staying through to the new year is its own kind of holiday.

March Break is the same house with longer days, and it makes an easy family vacation: Blue Mountain in the morning, 25 to 30 minutes away, and back by the afternoon for the hot tub while it is still light.