South America 2012: Portillo

After we made it to Santiago after our 24 hour bus ride and found our hostel for a few days, our next task was to make arrangements to hit Portillo. Our hostel helped us out by calling SkiTotal, a local equipment/shuttle outfit who does day trips to the surrounding resorts around Santiago. We'd been monitoring the snow on www.snow-forecast.com , and were looking forward to Portillo as we'd heard they'd gotten 2 feet of snow. We were met with disappointment after we'd gotten in touch with SkiTotal as they said the road to Portillo and Argentina was closed. We still wanted to shred, so we made arrangements to go to Valle Nevado, a closer resort who'd also gotten snow.

The SkiTotal was supposed to pick us up at 6:50am the next morning, but in true South American fashion they picked us up almost an hour later. We get to the SkiTotal hub to pick up some rentals, and are greeted by a crowd of about 300 other people with the same idea. For being the type of die hards at home who are usually one of the first cars on the road and some of the first people at the resort, patience grew thin very, very quickly. We maintained though, and proceeded to jump into the first of 3 required lines with the rest of the cattle.

As we were waiting, I started picking up on some of the staff muttering "Portillo, Portillo". Once I heard the staff in the bus line shouting this, I quickly ran over to confirm - the road had opened, we could get to Portillo!

Our anxiousness suddenly increased, and we were even more excited to get through the line and get on the bus. Our luck somehow improved, as since Portillo is the furthest resort away, they wanted to get those people on the road ASAP, so we stated being expedited through the the lines. We got our boots, and somehow managed to snag the last two larger boards over 140cms (163cms for Colin and 155cms for me). Lucky! We got our bus tickets, loaded our fancy rental equipment onto the bus, and we were off!

Portillo is about 2 hours from Santiago, and we got a first hand taste of the carnage a closure can do to the road. It's an odd one, as 2/3 of it are normal highway out of the city. Then you turn off and start climbing, and looking out the window you see desert cactus on the hillside, with a snow capped mountain backdrop. So weird! After a while of this, you get to a high mountain wall, with what turns out to be no less than 40 short and very sharp switchbacks. Portillo is at the top of this, and continuing on past it takes you into Argentina. The first sign of the lifts made us shout out, as not only were we excited to see them, but the one also crossed 3 of the switchbacks!

Due to the road closures, there was also a major, major backlog of semi trucks waiting to get through the pass. They were all stopped on the side of the road in a big line for kms and kms. Cars and buses were passing, and every 30 minutes or so the trios would move a km forward.

We got off the bus finally at noon, grabbed our gear, raced to the ticket window, and jumped onto the closest lift. The resort is so high up that it's well above the treeline, so it's all open bowls. There are 12 lifts, but only a handful are chairlifts. The rest are pomas, and I've never seen a 5 person one, all in a row, with only 2 sets of them on the whole line, charge up the mountain so fast before! It was almost comical, such a ridiculous contraption! We did a few runs on the one side with the lift that crosses the switchbacks, and discovered the snow was really good! Due to our late arrival a lot of it was already tracked out, but we did managed to find some fresh lines here and there, and they were awesome!

After a few runs here we made a quick stop into the on mountain rental shop for me. As I'm a goofy rider, they'd simply turned my bindings around instead of switching them properly. As a result, it felt like the high back was trying to snap my calf in half! Rental gear us what it is, and I was able to ride much better after this adjustment.

We then went to check out the other bigger side of the mountain that was in full sunshine. FUN! There was a big traverse we kept taking almost to the end that had a couple rollers to hit, with landings into only half ridden out pow. We watched a bunch of other guys hit them, all bailing, and then we both charged them successfully. Shredding in the Andes! If you went over further you could also snag over half fresh turns down the whole line.

Lower down there were a couple other plateaus through some rock garden type terrain that was mosty untouched, so we did the traverse-plateau loop a few times. It was then time for lunch, so we borrowed some stools from the J-Crew film crew who were shooting their Christmas catalogue, and sat next to gorgeous Laguna del Inca to enjoy our pre-packed sandwiches and beers. A moment to remember forever :)

After lunch we hit everything we'd done in the morning again, and did several of the traverse loops. So crazy that there were zero trees! Our rental gear was starting to leave bruises and blisters, but we still rode almost all the way til 5. We changed, snapped a fee more pictures, then said our farewell goodbyes to this super scenic resort as we hopped back on the bus.

2 hours later we were back in Santiago, tired and sore, but oh so happy Ullr decided to bless us in more ways than one. Viva Portillo!!

Here we go - shredding Portillo!! :D