Backcountry Skiing in Chile
Photos and text by Andres Chianale
Editor's note: It seems like that whenever we read articles or
watch video about skiing in South America the stories are either
a) about one of the big resorts down there or b) from the perspective
of North American rock stars who fly in to conquer some big couloir,
satiate their sumer thirst for turns or experience a dream vacation.
It's always been this way in the ski media since as long as we
can remember, so it was with great pleasure that we received
these photos, along with a short account illustrating how real
backcountry skiing locals in Chile do thieir thing...
August, 2005--
Since this is the off season for those of you in the Northern
Hemisphere, I thought you would appreciate some photos from a
backcountry skiing trip we did last month down here in Chile.
This was a fabulous two day trip we took
to the mountains somewhere near Curicó in Chile. There
are no big-name hills around here, and no tall summits were on
our minds, we were just looking for the fresh stuff and the steeps.
These mountains are located behind a limestone mine that provides
raw materials for a cement plant a short distance away. It's
not a place that is very often visited by mountaineers, but it
is a found paradise for us local telemarkers and ATers.
Our adventure began with our ride: a highly
modified Unimog truck, with part of a Mazda van passenger cab
added along with a pick-up truck bed taken from another vehicle.
In this picture, Franco, Jan, Sven, me Andres, Pancho, Hector,
Paulo and his truck. The dog is our good friend Geo. Of all of
us. Geo is the one that performed the best up there, actually.
To reach our goal we had to take the truck
to the limit, as you can see in the following photo...
Two days, two valleys explored. In the
next picture you can follow the track back to our camp site,
close to the big rock. The path to the right is from the first
day and the huge avy in the background up high is from early-season
heavy snowing days.
Here in the picture below, is a view of
the same spot but taken from the other side of the valley. You
can see the ski tracks laid down by two of us who simply couldn't
wait until the next day to get some turns on this slope with
the rest of the group, as originally planned!
In this next shot below we are progressing
a little further up the valley after what you see on the previous
picture...
Before the end of that slope, we turned
left and went up, along the final track to our destination:
Here below my brother Fanco and I on our
way back down the mountain. I'll admit it's not a very impressive
shot as far as showcasing my telemark skiing ability, but I'm
sure you will enjoy the mountain sights..
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It was a fantastic trip in every way, great
company, good snow and fine weather.
The only thing we missed on these perfect
days was really good wine.. Not that we do a lot of drinking
while out on the mountain, but considering that we were in the
region of our country famous for its fine wine and also that
two of us are very closely related to extremely prestigious vineyards
in our country, we just assumed that we would be tasting the
good stuff...
But we did have an excellent selection
of wonderful cheeses to share, brought by Pancho from Valdivia,
along with a not so good selection of artificial juice... next
time we will have to do better!
So this is how most of us enjoy our backcountry
skiing down here in Chile, probably in much the same way as most
of you do as well: fine times with good friends on beautiful,
snow-covered mountains. Making turns and enjoying life to its
fullest.
Isn't that what it's all about? |
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