Finally powder in Chile!

We headed straight to the border and were the first guys out. After the usual south american efficiency at the customs, we were finally good to go and our way to Chile. There was only 14km between us and the customs. It has snowed overnight, but the road was nicely cleared….

Until we got to a crossroad. The machinery didn’t plowed the road that was goin to Chile.

There was one track that was plowing through about a foot of snow. We figured, it would get better, so I jumped on the gas and went for it!

My enthousiasm last for 10meters… until we got stuck.

That was the second time we got stuck in two days.

Damn we should have crossed the night before instead of going for a steak and wine!

About 30 minutes later, the grader showed up and and perfectly cleared the road!

We were pretty excited about still being on target for skiing that day!

We followed the machines…. Until the official international border. When we got to the line separating Chile and Argentina, the machinery turned back. Guess what?! Yep the road wasn’t cleared on the Chilean side.

We parked the van and waited an hour, then two. After drinking the last beer we had, I went for a nap

Amelie eventually wakes me up as a 4x4 was making his way up from the Chilean side. They explained us their machinery was broken and they kept going to go explained the situation to the border patrol in Argentina.

When they eventually came back Amelie arranges that we would followed them.

That was quite a challenge to stay in their tracks as the van was getting jacked up by the snow but as we were going down, there was less and less snow. We finally got to the customs 5 hours after we left the Argentinean customs!

Our fun didn’t end up there! The guy from the immigration wasn’t working as he has left for personal reason. He came back an hour and a half later…

After trying to cross for 3 days, we were FINALLY in Chile!

With more snow on the forecast, we headed straight to  Nevados de Chillan in Las Trancas that apparently has the best snow of Chile.

The storm was accompanied by some harsh wind that kept the lifts closed. We tried to hike our way up but were also forced down due to the high wind.

We quit and got soaked in one of the numerous commercial termas with Tree, my friend from Canada. One thing led to another and we eventually ended up in the house of the owner of the Snowpub, the main bar in Las Trancas. The storm was forecasted to get stronger the following day, so we didn’t fell bad to enjoy the party with the chileans until almost dawn.

When we eventually woke up, we head to the hill just to make sure it was close…. And it wasn’t!

In a sense of emergency that we didn’t really feel during this trip, we got dressed and went to the Tata lift. We weren’t able to see much and by looking at the tracks on the hill, we didn’t missed much on the powder. It kinda looked like the lift just opened.

We skied non stop through some nice silky snow.

We went to bed early since they were calling for more snow overnight then a clear sky with no wind.

The perfect day that we were hoping for, happened. As we woke up, the sun was shinning, there wasn’t any wind and the whole mountain was plastered with snow.

We followed the good skiers around the mountain.

I do have to say that it was quite a great day of skiing!!!

Fort the first time of the season, all the lifts were running, the snow was nice, it wasn’t cold or warm, there was plenty of terrain to ski, so we were able to get great turns after great turns.

It is quite great to be able not only to enjoy only a few runs in the morning but to be able to get great runs from the beginning to the end of the day.

When we eventually stops skiing after more than 8 hours of non-stop skiing!

                            

When we left the resort to drive back towards Santiago, we left one of the best day of skiing I’ve had all summer and one of the great day you remember for a long time.

We stopped overnight in a Copec station. Those stations are the perfect stop for travellers. With 1$ super clean shower and state of the art station, they are a pretty reliable stop.

The sound of broken glass waked us up in the middle of our sleep. It sounds like people were throwing beer bottle at each other. Then we heard guys shouting, tires squealing and a loud deep sound. We heard the same thing 2 or 3 times as we were waiting for it to ends in our sleeping bags, Amelie said that we should just leave. I crawled to the front of the van to peek through the small opening of the window to see what was happening.

Outside was a masked man walking nervously and talking on the cellphone. It didn’t took me long to figured out that they were there to rob the store.

Hopefully, the finally succeed and left after the front panel of the ATM slammed our van.

We were kinda relief that nothing worse happened!

It was about 6AM (which is about 3AM for North America since they started their day pretty late!) and there was no way we would be able to get back to sleep! We left and started driving towards the ski station El Colorado.

After what was probably my worst ever traffic experience, we finally got to El Colorado around noon after 6+hours to cover about 100km!!!

Valle Nevado, El Colorado, Farellones and La Parva are located (usually) 45minutes from Santiago and next to each others.

The terrain is more extensive than what it looks at the first sight. We were both a bit tired from the previous extensive long day of skiing and the short night of sleep but since the conditions were pretty nice, we skied almost non-stop.

The cover was quite thin as we both hit rocks and the terrain is not super steep, but obviously, people are not too eager about the powder since there was plenty left!

After witnessing a great sunset, we drove down to check out the IF3 presentation The Eye of the Condor that was happening in Santiago. That competition consists of putting on the best video in a week.

                            

It was quite impressive to see what those guys were capable in such a short period of time! No wonder why annual ski movies company presents such amazing images!

The following day was pretty standard with the last minute shopping and packing of our stuff. Pablo from Wicked Camper even kindly dropped us at the airport!!

Amelie and I both had to agree. Even if we didn’t ski that much powder, it was quite a great trip! I really loved it down there and I’m really looking forward to go back!

But before next summer, lets come winter!

Cheers,

evans

Spring before winter!

We got a bit tired of waiting for some great snow, so we left Pucon to see if we would be able to find anything good snow further south.

We headed to Osorno where there is a small resort on Volcano of the same name.

The map of the area we had wasn’t quite precise. We ask a bit around and we were eventually directed towards what should be the resort.

I started to doubt as we were going up a small dirt road with a slight cover of snow.

To make a long story short, we eventually figured out once we got at the end of the road that resort wasn’t on the north side of the resort (where we were) but on the south side. To make it there, there was a bit more than 3 hours of driving involve….

                           

The worst part is that there wasn’t even enough snow to go out for some turns. Instead of skiing and check out this small resort, we spend the day hiking around the volcano and enjoying the view.

 

                               

We were both a bit bummed about the non-ski day, but that was certainly quite a great day out.

A bit pissed about that mis-orientation, we left the area without going checking the resort and headed to Antillanca.

That resort certainly showed the signs of a bad snow year so far.  

The cover at the bottom of the slope was really thin. It seems that they were kind of grooming the rocks with the snow!

                                            

We skinned up the resort figuring out we could climb the volcano Casablanca. Which is behind the resort.  As we got close to the top, we found out that it was fairly icy. Actually, the slopes were really shinny and we could barely stand. We gave up the idea of summiting the Casablanca volcano..

                              

From the top of the ski resort Antillanca, we had a terrific view of the surrounding volcanoes. We made one lap down the groom run the view was certainly better than the turns.

                               

                                                                                        

As we kept moving and headed towards Argentina we found out we weren't the only one having problem with the ice!

First stop was in Villa La Angostura to check out Cerro Bayo.

                           

                                                                                  

The bottom of the resort had the worst snow covering: grass!!

We bootpacked up from the bottom until we were able to put the skins on.  We headed towards the freesking area.  We eventually found out that the snow was better up there. 

                             

After a quite miserable start, we both had to agree that it was probably our best day so far! We for the first time some nice cold snow to make turns on!

                          

                                                                               

                                                                                

After that great day of skiing, we heard from Vincent, a friend of mine from Quebec, saying he had quite a good spring skiing day in Chapelco. We made it a no brainer to drive the 3 hours to catch with him.

We caught up with them and drove to Chapelco where we skinned up the resort and went straight to the backcountry.The scenery was certainly quite nice, but the snow was a mix of powder, dead cookies and hard spot.

The north slope had seen much more sun and were quite soft.

As bad as the south side was for skiing, the north side was everything you would expect from spring skiing.

All and all, that was quite a great day of skiing!

So good that we went back for some resort skiing the following day.

Vince and Manu had quite a night out and they woke up just 20 minutes before their checkout. We spend the day out chilling and enjoying the lifts to another great day of skiing!

 

We drove straight to Bariloche.

We were pretty excited to check out Cerro Catedral, the resort next from Bariloche, but we woke up to some cold and cloudy day.

We figured it would be a great day to start with some eggs and wine.

We drove around town, did some laundry and catch up some undone geeking from the past days.

After wandering around for the day, we caught up with Vince and Manu to check the sunset over the lakes surrounding Bariloche.

We got stuck at the Blest, the local microbrewery, that were offering a 50% on the beer from 6PM to 8PM. After our second 2.5liters of beer, we made the plan for the next say to drive south to check out Perito Moreno near El Bolson.

From the maps, it looks like there was a nice backcountry area above the resort.

We got there and found the driest resort we have witnessed so far! There wasn’t even a trace of snow at the bottom! We caught the chairlift to save some hiking above the resort.

We quickly found out the area above the resort is dead flat and certainly doesn’t worth to make it up there if you are looking for turns. We hiked around and made it up for the view, but one shouldn’t go there for the turns.

Actually, I think the town of El Bolson worth more stopping by than the resort. With it small hippy market around the central plaza, it has a much better vibe than Bariloche.

After a homemade sandwich, we kept driving south towards Esquel and its local resort: La Hoya. We drove under a great night full of stars and stopped about 30km before making it to town to chill and drink a bit of wine.

Another bluebird day was waiting for us the following morning.

The good news was the resort had snow all the way at the bottom! This was only the 2^nd resort (after Chapelco), that we found snow all the way down to the base! The snow condition wasn't too promising though!

The resort was actually fairly covered! We even got the word that it this resort was pretty often offering less snow due the high wind.

We hiked a bit around and check out different aspect until we found the nice north facing slope that was getting warmed up by the sun!

We lapped that face almost all day enjoying the nice soft turns in that steady spring snow! I thought I was making a trip in South America to get some more winter, but instead, we were having spring day after spring day!

We didn’t chilled out too much in the parking lot since about 4 hours of driving were waiting for us to get back to Bariloche to catch up with Babiche who just made it to Argentina.

The plans for the coming days are to check out a bit more the skiing potential of Bariloche!

Vamos!