It finally happened!
After resisting for
multiple years to the urge of my girlfriend to do a ski trip in South America,
I finally gave up and catch a plane July 12th with Amelie. After all, last winter wasn’t as
great as my previous winters with only 6 weeks of ski trip (compare to the
usual 12-15!!)
We left the toasting
warm Montreal to leave for Santiago.
As the plane was
taking off, I still wasn’t able to feel the urge of skiing.
The trip went
flawlessly and we arrived as plan in the morning. After catching the city bus,
the subway and a cab, we were finally at the Wicked Camper headquarter to get
the van we’ve rented for the next month.
We were pretty stoked
to get the key of our Chilean home!!
Since winter is the
low season to rent a van, the price and availability were better than in
summer. And what is really great is that the van come fully equiped with
cookware, cooking stove, foldable table, chairs, pillows and chains!
Pablo, who is running
the Santiago office, and Tono are both quite a cool guy and were really taking
the time to show us the van and explained us basic safety and travelling tips.
Since the
precipitations were pretty sparse
we hitted the road to go south towards Pucon.
The road 5
(PanAmerican Highway) is really great to travel fast. With perfect asphalt,
separate double lanes everywhere, it is certainly the best way to make some
distance fast. The drawback are the tolls who cost almost as much as the gas!
The scenery from the road are not the most intereting since even if you can
always see the Andes in the distance, you never gets really close to them.
We finally got to
Pucon late after a day and a half of driving.
When we eventually
woke up to get our first turns, we got to a station with absolutely no snow on
the ground!
We learned that there
is usually snow in the parking lot, but it is a bit early in the season to have
some.
Since a bad news
usually never come alone, we learned the lifts were close due to the high
wind. We made the quick skin up to
the top of the chairlift. Once we got there, we could barely stand due to the
wind. We chilled a bit waited for the weather to eased up a bit, but it never
did…
Our first summer
turns were on some spring snow with poor visibility!
It seems the Chillean
are a bit used to have the lift close since a lot of them were out hiking to
get some turns in. The fact that it was their winter holiday brought many of
them to the mountain.!
Most of them didn’t
really cared about the lack of snow or poor visibility, but were simply
enjoying the joy of playing in the snow!
Since the conditions
weren’t quite convincing, we decided to go check out the nearby (as it appears
on the map…) station of Las Araucarias. After 3 hours of driving and crossing a
closed bridge with the van, we got to the parking lot that had a bit of snow in
it!
We were pretty stoked
to wake up and check the conditions the following morning since the sky was all
blue!
After a better look at
the mountain, we realized that it was quite shinny! Signs that a recent rain
episode now frozen solid….
We took a ride up to
go check out different aspect and peek the possibility to hike on the Volcano
Llaima.
The view certainly
compensate for the shitty skiing conditions we were having! I don’t think I’ve
ever skin on such hard surface for that long! We eventually stop our ascension
since the wind was making it almost impossible to hike any higher.
After a lunch enjoying
the view of the volcano, we thought we might try the sunny side to check if the
snow has soften up from the sun.
And it did!!!
The turns were pretty
smooth and it was great to have some decent turns just at the foot of a pretty
stunning volcano!
As we made our way
back to the resort, we found some nice spring conditions. The trees around the
resort are also pretty cool! Those araucarias trees seem to have been taken
straight from Jurassic Park! It was kind of making turns under pre-historic
palm trees!
With high wind on the
forecast and more rain, we decided to drive back to Pucon where there is more
options for various activities than Las Araucarias (where the only non-skiing
activity is drinking…!)
The forecast was right
on!
It was fairly chilly
and pissing rain.
We figured we could
tourist a bit around Pucon to spend some time than headed to the termas for a
soak. The town of Pucon is quite a busy touristic town. There is multiple adventure outfitter for almost every activity one can think of! That makes it a bit too much of a tourist oriented place to my taste....
Fortunately, there are some small things like the electrified trees that remind you that it is not still Banff!!!
Termas Los Pozones are
apparently a favorite amongst Chilean. So there we went! It is a pretty cool
set up just next to a nice class 3+ rapid! We took the afternoon to soak up in
the warm water as the rain was pissing on us.
When the weather
eventually cleared up by the end of the day, the top of the nearby mountain
where slightly white. There was probably hope to have some decent snow higher
up!
We went back to
Pucon-Villarica ski resort for a second try and…. It was still pure ice. The
snow from the previous day hasn’t been able to stick to the hard surface that
was already present.
We put the crampons to
climb a bit higher since the skins were simply useless. After some time
wandering around and waiting, the snow eventually soften up a bit and we were
able to have again some decent turns on some certain aspect. That could have
certainly been better but we were certainly quite lucky to have the sun to melt
up a bit the surface.
The next morning, we
woke up to some cooler temp and a much more overcast sky. We figured that the
snow wouldn’t soften up this time and that it didn’t worth making up to the
hill to check it out.
With all the rain from
the previous day, we figured it would be a much better day to get in the water!
We went to an
outfitter and I rented a kayak as Amélie embark on a rafting trip! It was a
nice float trip on the Baja Liucura!
We eventually catch up
with Tree, a friend of our, who was in Chile to guide for Casa Tour. After a
great dinner and some wine bottle poping, we experience the late night shift of
the Chilean bar… With nothing much interesting in the forecast, we figured it
was the best time to check it out! We eventually crawled out of the van fairly
late this morning.
It looks like we’re
most likely to hit the road to see if there is anything better around Chile.
Hope we get better snow in the coming days....because there is none on the forecast!!
evans
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