Words By Jeremy Dubs
When snowboarding in Chile, you never know what to expect. After last season started with a blast just after Memorial Day 2008, everyone was hoping for a repeat. Whether due to global warming (a large hole in the ozone layer is over South America) or simply a seasonal draught, the slopes down in Chile remained sunny and dry through most of June this year. 70 degree plus days in Santiago made for better skating and bbq weather than early winter storms. The weather forecasters were predicting an unusually dry year and the people were wondering if they should trade in their snowboard for a surfboard.
Then a switch from the heavens must have been flipped. The rains started in the South of Chile and spread fast to the Northern regions. As they reached the Andes, the first snowfalls started to form dropping 3 feet of powder. If that wasn't enough, during the last weekend 47 inches dropped in about 30 hours, with sun the following day. Now the mountains are drenched in white fluff so deep, you can get lost underneath it all. When you fall over you are literally swimming in snow.
Here are some updates on Chilean happenings.
At El Colorado ski resort they've made some big changes adding a new t-bar to access further zones and park rats can purchase a Snowpark-only season's pass. They have added new terrain in Farellones with the first lighted night riding in South America. Look out for the weekly night rail jams and contests. Valle Nevado announced that they are discontinuing their halfpipe as of this year, which is sad because it was formerly host to the first snowboarding World Cup event each year in September. In lighter news, sounds like Valle Nevado will host the 2nd Annual Pink Sessions, the first all day Girls-only contest in Chile. Portillo has plenty of snow and it looks to be a good time over there if you have the $1000+ to drop on a week at a private resort with a limit on lift ticket sales of 400 tickets per day. In the south, Termas de Chillan has changed its name to Nevados de Chillan after an ownership change. In addition they are focusing additonal resources on building a snowpark after years of catering exclusively to building exclusive slopes for touring slalom ski teams and ignoring the growing snowboard community. In Pucon the crew at Beanies and Bikinis (the restaurant, snowboard shop and local riders mecca) have been busy developing the Piedra Azul Freestyle Riding Club to get local riders together to progress themselves and build new features. This is the same crew behind the Big Bang Contest, which boasts the only Backcountry snowboard contest to go down in the month of October each year.
As these words are being written, yet another storm has ripped into the Andes and the forecasts are looking excellent for a season of deep dry pow-pow in Chile. Plane tickets are cheaper than ever, so take a break from working this summer and drop some loot on the trip of a lifetime. For those that have to see to believe, El Colorado has added a collection of webcams to get an up-to the minute view of conditions on the slopes at http://www.elcolorado.yx.cl.
