After about a 400 km
drive south from Santiago, we arrived in Chillian where we finished our errands
before heading to Las Trancas / Nevados de Chillan where we would spend the
next week. Matt had to use the WiFi for work while Andy and I finished grocery
shopping and sorted out the sim card for the phone (not an easy process with
lots of driving around to different places and guessing what the locals were
saying, but perseverance won).
It was snowing by
the time we reached the AirBnB – good omen for the week to come! The cabin was
a quaint little A-frame in the woods with a loft, loved it! The only thing that
was not ideal was the sim card – which turns out did not provide service at the
cabin. Can’t win them all.
For the next 8 days,
we settled into a blissful routine: get up early, gear up, head to the mountains,
ski until exhausted, return to the cabin, drink Chilean wine, eat, enjoy
friendship, sleep, repeat. There was only one exception to the routine: when it
snowed so much that we couldn’t get the car out and ended up drinking wine all
day instead of just in the evening.
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| The routine. Top right photo shows when we ran out of wine on the snow day. The photo directly underneath proves that cutting onions with goggles works like a charm! |
I cannot emphasize
enough how epic the skiing was! I never thought I would say this, but my only
complaint (which is kind of a big one) was that there was “too much snow and not
enough people.” Only in Chile would this be a problem. No matter how much it
snows, the employees start work at the same time – opening time for the resort
of course. They do not show up early to clear the lifts and start the chair turning,
no NO, they show up at 9am (when the resort opens) and moze around contemplating
working. With so much snow and not enough people to justify the effort of clearing
the lifts, not much work was actually accomplished and on many occasions we
found ourselves agitated and waiting around for hours (with about a dozen other
westerners) while we waited for the lifts to start. This only happened on “Chile
time” and, because the avalanche danger was so high, backcountry skiing was out
of the question on the best powder days.
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| Touring Nevados de Chillan. Note the fully buried, inoperable lift. |
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| Skiing the resort. |
Speaking of avalanches…
on day 4 we experienced probably the
most terrifying 2-hours of our ski careers (or lack of careers – we are not
that good). We were riding up the t-bar near the top of the resort when Andy
and Matt saw a snowboarder trigger an avalanche on an out-of-bounds slope to
the left of the t-bar. Three snowboarders had been cutting a heavily loaded
slope which led directly into a decent sized gully (in this case terrain trap).
The thing Andy and Matt saw was the slope give way, dropping about 3 feet of
snow on top of the 3rd snowboarder who fell and was dragged down
below sight line. All four of us (Scott, our new Australian friend included) quickly
made our way to the gully which was now completed buried in avalanche debris. Since
we knew the avalanche danger was very high that day, all of us were wearing avalanche
beacons and carried shovels and probes. We quickly got to work, yelling up to
other skiers on the t-bar to tell ski patrol! We soon discovered that none of
the snowboarders were wearing active beacons and the clock was ticking to
uncover the buried group. Ski patrol responded surprisingly fast and soon we
had about 40 people including ski patrol, resort staff, and a handful of
tourists with avalanche training probing the vast debris field hoping to find a
person and not a body. Ten, 20, 30 minutes past and the hope for survival was
lessening by the minute. Adrenaline was running VERY high and the work was
absolutely exhausting. To make matters worse the probes were too short to reach
the bottom of the snow field and eventually a pit was dug near where the snowboarder
was last seen and we began to make our way up the debris field hoping to get
lucky. After an hour and a half of probing and digging, ski patrol was alerted
on their radios that the snowboarders had been found having a beer in the lodge.
Apparently, they had ridden the avalanche out, narrowly missing being buried,
and decided not to tell anybody. The angle of the slope/gully made it so that
it was impossible to see down and know this from the t-bar. Although we were
obviously relieved and it was great practical training, I NEVER want to experience
anything like that again. Ski patrol invited us to join them for a celebration
beer and meal which we did, but our day of skiing was over. It took most of the
evening for our heart rates to return to their new normal (likely about 10 bpm
higher than that morning).
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| Avalanche "recovery" |
We ended up touring 4
days and skiing the resort 3 days at Nevados de Chillan – although in full
disclosure, some of the touring days were actually side country (the resort
sold cheap freeride tickets for a single lift up and you could tour from the
top of the lifts). The highlight tour
was to a hot springs in a massive valley below the iconic Chillan Volcano. We
had actually intended to climb the volcano, but as we were waiting for Scott,
we looked up and the volcano farted – ash and smoke filled the air around the top
and we were quickly convinced that a change of plans was in order. We skinned
from the top of the resort up and over into a large valley with a natural hot
springs that we could not find. With the help of some other skiers, we eventually
found the small hot stream buried in 10+ feet of snow. The water was not deep enough
to get in, but we confirmed it was warm and ate lunch before returning out of
hot springs valley. The climb out was exhausting with crazy winds at the top.
Rather than ski the route we were hoping to, we traversed through the wind and
exposed rocks to ski the icy resort down to the car. The whole way down we kept
saying how sticky our skis felt, turns out the volcanic ash from the morning’s flatulating
caused ash to become one with the wax on our bases. I can now confirm, 2 years
later, that the ash is very difficult to get out of the base of your skis.
Hot springs tour.
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