Chile… yeah, that was a bit of a love-hate affair, although for a reason as mundane as the weather. We crossed over from Argentina at the Cristo Redemptor pass which is not too far from Santiago. Not much snow in Portillo, but we had already got used to it, and hardly accessible backcountry- we gave it a pass.
Santiago as a capital ain’t too bad- old buildings, nice coffee shops, lots of gardens and good public transport system. And every US company you can think of is there- you can tell the foreign affairs of the country just by looking at the display windows of its shops. And in the supermarkets… I felt like wallowing on the floor from happiness when I saw that can of Dr Pepper soda on the shelf… Long live American imperialism! In Santiago we visited a mate of mine, Hugo, and abused man’s hospitality as it was due time for our annual shower and laundry. Good think about taking showers only occasionally is that you remember every single one of them and providing the water was hot, the last one is always the best one. But where were we… Ah, Hugo! Together with his family we went for a trip in our van to Valparaiso one day, which was a really cool trip- good company, good seafood, very pretty port town on the hills with colourful houses, narrow passages in between the buildings and old telefericos taking people up and down those steep harbour hills. Yeah, we both with Mick liked the place a lot. But our time around Santiago passed mainly in the mountains. We skied a couple of days in Valle Colorado and Valle Nevado, did an off-piste day in the couloirs of Farallones, I had some exciting stomach adventures which as humorous as they were are not that sort of things that you pride yourself with in the blog. But generally we froze our cute little butts off in those mountains. So when Chilean post fucked up our delivery from Australia we knew it was time to go. The road was calling.
Chillan was next on the list. We stayed there for a week as at first it was so windy that the house roofs were making low flybys all over the parking lot and later on it was so good that I didn’t wanna leave. Time-out we used wisely chasing up the god damn refill of our gas bottle- that was how I spent my birthday this year. Party on, Wayne! Party on, Gart! But when the good weather came in, it stayed in for over five days- 5 sunny, almost windless days in that magic backcountry with hidden natural hot springs, volcanoes and beautiful vallones (little valleys) all over the place. I loved it there. So we both got fired to skiing volcanoes and there were all those volcanoes that were coming up our way. I’m afraid it didn’t quite pan out for us that way.
First, Antuco- we missed the weather window by a day and then it was all about wind, fog and rain. After 4 days of waiting we gave up and drove further south. There was a weather window coming in 3 days and we really wanted to do Llaima, a volcano that erupted recently twice, 2008 and 2009.
We spent one day in Las Araucarias, an extremely friendly ski resort, walking around in the mist and rain. But the next day we scored high- a beautiful sunny day, not too much wind for most of it, just on the summit which we had to do in crampons for all that funky icy growth on the last 200 meters of the cone. The top was all steaming up, numerous craters, warm rocks, snow bridges, snow layers collapsing from heat, little crevasses- was beautiful and challenging at the same time. We didn’t ski off the top because of the ice but lower down the snow was great. You know those runs when you’re gliding over smooth gentle slopes, around you just the blue sky and white unspoilt snow, and it’s perfectly silent… I do, now.
From the slopes of Llaima we saw two perfect volcanic cones of Villarrica and Lanin. We rushed in their direction but the weather didn’t open again. We were lucky enough to see the top of Villarrica only once more; one night its top was glowing red from lava reflecting in the low clouds over the summit (fucking awesome view, if you ask me). But after that, the clouds closed in and dropped low… all the way down. And the forecast didn’t say any better for the next 5 days. So after lingering in Pucon for some days and a couple of visits to the hot springs in Los Pozones (cool spot to hang out even on gloomy days) we farewelled Chile to chase the good fortune in the famous Argentinean skiing capital of San Carlos de Bariloche. But that is a story for another day…