antuco

I wasn´t planning to visit this part of chile, volcanoes don´t seem to capture my attention as much as the folded kind of mountains even if they are bigger and blow up sometimes. Still i jumped at the chance to come on the trip with Nicco and JP, they were great skiers and great company (when translating for the gringo) and it seemed like a great chance to see some back roads of chile. The lower valleys look a lot like northern new england (what i look for in a place i guess...) and the skiing was great. most of the volcanos have a small 1-3 lift ski area at the base which makes for easy access and you can usually put your skis on at the car at 5000´ or so. The peaks we skied were all 9500 or 10,000 feet, which made for a nice day, lots of skiing but no alpine starts or thin air. One exception to this is Lanin (which we didn´t ski), it would be an overnight or a mt baker sized day.

The employed Sebastian, JP and Nicco were geared up with all the nice things modern ski mountaineers enjoy, while students tom and claudio were duct taping mismatched skins with bad glue to their ski bases. Tom was touring on alpina xc skis with 25 year old silvretta bindings and rear entry alpine boots of the same vintage. To my great discredit i started to wonder how far we´d make it. When they took off almost at a run and led the first 2000´ in an hour i started worrying about myself instead. fortunately the pace eased a bit and we all made the summit with the sun low in the sky. hugs all around and photos with the chilean flag (which came on all the summits, we need more of this spirit in the US) and then we skied great corn down as the sun set. When we got to the car we convinced the ski area care taker to open the kitchen for beer and steaks with fried egg. This patronage entitled us to a some floor space in a storage shed where we made our camp out of the wind. The next morning we loaded the car and departed for Volcan Lonquimay.