August 23, 2005 - September 30, 2005 | Chile and Argentina, | Ski

The Andes are wild, South America is too, both should be seen at least once in a lifetime, and dry powder in August can’t be beat. The following is from my first trip into South American skiing, where I arrived to find the best winter in 25 years:

Santiago, Chile is a strange place to start a ski trip. It’s a chaotic, smoggy and confusing Latin city, home to well over 5 million, and stands in great contrast to the Andes only 40km away. But it makes for great access. I arrived on a rainy cold day in August 2005, the sudden Southern winter a shock to the senses (August is roughly Chile’s February). Looking at the snow reports from local resorts, however, made the place feel more like home, with 24 inches in the past two days and clear skies forecast.

Morning came cold and clear, revealing suddenly the mile-high peaks that hang over the city. Then came a strange process that would take getting used to. First rush-hour on the packed Santiago subway with full ski gear, then upstream on sidewalks full of glaring commuters, and finally into a transfer van driven by a wanna-be rally car racer through winding river valleys and 30 some hairpin turns. But as the arid sagebrush gave way to stunning peaks of the Andes, the nausea seemed justified.

Only 45 minutes from Santiago, the three resorts of La Parva, El Colorado, and the French designed Valle Nevado, offer Europe like acreage, a giant interconnected lift system, and access to huge, wild mountains. I arrived at Valle to find the skiing pretty good for an August morning, with blue skies and 2 feet of blower powder. It’s expensive for South Americans to ski, so as I logged run after run through huge treeless bowls, cornices with fluff landings, and too many perfect wind lips, I seemed to be the only one skiing off the groomed.

But even the few skiers that were intrepid enough to ski the powder managed to tear it up a bit, and so around noon, I took to exploring the other features of the area including road runs that make paying for heli-skiing seem silly, and the endless expanse of terrain in Valle’s backyard.

Where Valle Nevado ends, the Andes really begin. Peaks starting at 13,000 feet shoot up out of the resort’s somewhat flat valleys and lead to the monster peak of the area, El Plomo, 5,430m, (17,814 ft). This high, yet accessible elevation, the Andes’ craggy rock lined chutes and bowls, and a location of about the latitude of Los Angeles with a climate that seems to be either storm or sun, all make the dramatic terrain just out of the resort nearly perfect for earning turns. With a couple hours left, I hit a ridgeline of the nearest peak, and an hour later, lungs feeling like I was summiting Everest, was standing atop a series of couloirs rimmed by jagged rock and ending in a huge alpine bowl. Gazing at the countless sunny chutes and bowls only a short hop away with no other tracks, the place felt lonesome.

But after a few hard ski checks, I was skiing knee deep fluff in the sun down 2000ft of vertical. Then back to the lift, and into the transfer van for the rally ride home. And so, after my first day of skiing in South America, and to this day the best complete ski day of my life, I was sure the rest of the 2 month trip would be a total bust.

Luckily, the rest lived up to the first. Three days later, a monster storm blew in. It rained, Santiago flooded (you could watch parts of houses flow down the central river), and the mountains became inaccessible as more than 3 meters (9+ft!) of snow fell in three days. During this period of waiting, I learned rather painfully that Chileans are super friendly, but live in a culture where staying out until 4 or 5 in the morning is early.

After 4 days of rain, the sun broke. It took around another two days to dig out access to Valle Nevado, and when I asked a Valle patroller when they might get all their lifts running, he pointed to one distant t-bar and explained that the 15 foot towers were buried almost entirely, shrugging. After the storm, snow showers and sun were the only weather features, and for the next two weeks I chose the best weather day and explored the local chutes and summits, only scratching the inexhaustible touring terrain in the area.

Part two of the trip was a rough start. Portillo, a self contained resort on a large lake high in the Andes, is like a cruise ship with a ski area, and wealthy clients pay to be shuttled directly to their all-inclusive ball room in the mountains. And so with no direct public transportation for the rest of us, I ended up in the small town of Los Andes, trying to hitch-hike one of the hundreds of semi-trucks crossing the pass to Argentina. Three hours later, I went to the local bus station and learned, with help from a Portillo employee, that buses headed for Argentina will stop, if the driver knows you or is in a good mood, twice daily at Portillo and drop you off on the highway.

As the only major overland route open in winter, the highway between Chile and Argentina sees hundreds of trucks chug their way daily up 20 plus dramatic switchbacks. Their exhaust browns this area of what otherwise is one of the world’s great mountain ranges (maybe the strangest thing I’ve seen on this road were giant condors, endangered in N. America, eating garbage on the roadside). At the top of all this sits sparkling Portillo.

Any stay at Portillo includes 4 gourmet meals a day, and skiing the resort’s very steep terrain, can make it hard to find time to get all the punches filled in your meal card. But seeing the Southern Cross for the first time from the outdoor pool that evening, it felt like I had arrived.

However, without a lot of money it’s just as difficult to leave Portillo as to arrive, and so I stood with a ‘Mendoza, Argentina’ sign the next day at dusk on the highway. The empty bus that picked me up would later drop me, around midnight, at a gas station with no Argentinean money, on the outskirts of Mendoza. But I consider seeing sunset on 6962 meter (22,830ft) Cerro Aconcagua, tallest peak outside of Asia, worth every hopeless moment As the capital of Argentinean wine production, Mendoza is a lucky stopover on the way to Las Lenas.

Las Lenas, named after a yellowish firewood bush, is easily the most well planned resort in South America. More on the eastside of the Andes in Argentina, if it’s not white-out or blowing 100 kilometers an hour, it seems to be sunny and mild, and with a vertical drop of 4,000ft, the resort offers inexhaustible terrain inside its vaguely defined boundaries. The lone summit chair is unlike any other-a wind battered double dwarfed by the terrain it serves-rocky chutes, bowls, and staggering craggy peaks. I arrived on the first calm sunny day after 10 days and 10 feet of snow. As I took my first ride to the top, the whole place was untouched snow and sun-oh well.

With a top altitude of 3430m (11230ft) Las Lenas gets testy weather, with frequent wind closures, and complete closure during storms (the summit chair was closed for a month in 2006 after an avalanche). But when it’s calm, offers an unlimited mix of any type of skiing, be it true no fall skiing under the lift, lift assisted exploration, or touring to rugged Andean peaks only a few kilometers off the top of the resort. More hardcore North American and European skiers come here than to other parts of South America, but it’s still a long ways away. And it beats waiting until November to ski in the Northern Hemisphere.

I returned to South America in August 2006 to again find awesome skiing. Travel partners are always welcome, and with more experience the travel nightmares have smoothed out. Anyone depressed by the approach of summer and interested in more info should drop by Pro Ski Service in North Bend and have a chat.
-Joe Hoch