southern ski pilgrimage 2006

Back to Winter Soon!

2006-09-21T10:53:00.000-07:00

Well, I've got to admit I've beena bit bummed about the return to a snowless environment. The only upside is that the ski season will be starting up here pretty soon. Hopefully I'll get some turns in within a month and a bit.

My Coast Mountains backcountry skiing trip reports all go in my regular website here:

Matt Gunn's Coast Mountains Trip Reports

Argentina and Chile Ski Touring Trip Reports

Check it out!

Home at Last

2006-09-01T08:51:00.000-07:00

Whew! After over 24 of travel, I made it home to Vancouver and was excited to be met by Dora at the airport. Although I'm already missing the Andes, it's great to be back. We went out for a fantastic Greek dinner at The Main near home and I was surprised at how perfectly normal it felt to be back in town. Argentina feels so far away now, and the memories of my experiences there are sureal and dream like. one things for sure, it was a good dream...

Vancouver via Buenas Aires

2006-08-30T14:21:00.000-07:00

Just flew into Buenas Aires from Barioche and will be leaving Argentina in two and a half hours. I'm excited to be heading home, but I certainly feel like I could spend a couple more months here. The Andes are beautiful, and there are so many peaks I'd like to visit, let alone the rest of the (non-skiable) continent. what a place, I'll have to return.

last days...

2006-08-28T19:02:00.000-07:00

I'm in the home stretch with only one day left in bariloche. I got our on great tours on Saturday and today and I have one more lined up for tomorrow (sunday was an errand day -booking flight to Beunas Aires, etc). The weather has been awesome and the spring skiing is very enjoyable. It's been fun checking out some of the tours close to town here. It's been a great tirp, and I'm looking forward to going home, but at the same time it feels strange to be heading home so quickly. There are lots of great people here and so many great places to ski that I feel like I could easily use a couple more months here. Regardless, I'm excited to get back home!

Back in Bariloche

2006-08-25T19:45:00.000-07:00

Osorno didn´t pan out, I guess the weather gods thought we had gotten our fair share of stellar days. I dropped Pat off in Osorno so that he could bus up to Santiago and fly home. It was a bummer to see him go; meeting up with him had, without question, made the trip an awesome adventure. Frey and the Volcanoe tour will undoubtedly be the highlight of my time here. Thanks a ton Pat, you rock! Now that I'm back in bariloche I'm going ot try to squeeze in a couple more days on the boards before I have to fly home.

Lonquimay

2006-08-24T10:42:00.000-07:00

Another amazing ski ascent followed by almost 5000 ft of perfect spring corn. Today was probably the best ski descent we've had off a volcanoe. The weather is supposed to go downhill a bit tomorrow but we're probably going to try for one more volcanoe before we call it quits. Vn. Osorno is quite a ways south of us, but it's early and we're going to race down there to give it a shot. Our time is starting to run out, as I need to return the rental car by Saturday at 7 pm and Pat needs to get to Santiago for a flight home. There's also the potential problem of a strom shutting down the highways that cross the andes which I'll need to take back to Bariloche. Despite this, we can still probably squeeze another one in!

Click here to see more photos from this trip

Llaima

2006-08-23T14:28:00.000-07:00

Amazing day! Climbed Llaima and had a great ski down. I'm pretty sure it´s the best summit I've ever visited. We're off to Lonquimay tomorrow as the weather is still good. I'll give more details and photos later.

Click here to see more photos from this trip

Frey-licious

2006-08-18T12:51:00.000-07:00

Wow. That´s all I can say about the last 4 days. Had an amazing time skiing lines off of the peaks around Frey. Great weather, great location, great people, great times! I´ll get some pictures up and some more details shortly, but right now I'm off to see the Best of the Banff Film Festival, which is playing here in Bariloche.
Peaks just above the hut. We skied a line which begins at the base of the highest peak in the photo and descends to skiers right. Awesome powder!
Patrick loves powder!
An argentino named Merlin leads us down a great run.

Click here to see more photos from this trip

Frey-ed

2006-08-14T15:50:00.000-07:00

Tried to head into Refugio (hut) Frey today but got denied. It took quite a while to stumble through the process of getting a one way ticket up the ski resort so we got a late start. Our route followed a ridgeline to slopes above the hut, which was intended to minimize our exposure to avalanche hazard. Unfortunately it left us exposed to huge winds. Someone at the resort told us the winds were over 100 km/hour. Because of the winds we were moving quite slowly, and consequently we weren’t going to have the ability to make a go or no go decision once we reached the final slopes down to the hut. Our hope was to have enough time to turn back if conditions looked bad. We turned back in the early afternoon and headed back to the comfort of an on mountain restaurant for a hamburger, pizza and beer. Conditions look better for tomorrow so we’re going to give it another shot in the morning, possibly by another route.

Refugio Frey?

2006-08-13T16:18:00.000-07:00

I spent the last two days taking it easy and trying to get over the cold I have. The weather is looking quite a bit better for the next 3 or 4 days, so I've packed up food for 5 days and will try to head into the Frey hut tomorrow with Dan and Patrick. We'll check out the conditions and make a decision tomorrow once we're up at the ski resort where you access the hut from.

Doh!

2006-08-12T19:24:00.000-07:00

After spending a week living in a hostel I´ve now picked up a cold. Doh! It´s hard to get a full night sleep with all the activity in the hostel til 1 am every night and trying to get up for skiing every morning. Thrown in the exposure to a multitude of new people and a weak immune system to what ever bugs are floating around. The crew that came in at 4am the other night singing the theme from Titanic couldn´t have helped. I´m taking a couple days off skiing to get over this thing. Not too big a deal since the avi looks bad and it´s snowing. I´ll be healthy when the backcountry is ready.

Resort Touring

2006-08-11T15:21:00.000-07:00

Patrick works his way through trees at Cerro Cathedral

The snow continues blanket the surrounding mountains and avi danger is certainly high at the moment. For this reason, Patrick and I decided to spend the day ascending the resort on skins and skiing powder stashes in the trees. The low density snow is fantastic and we found some excellent turns today. As we climbed into the start of the alpine we were greeted by winds that nearly knocked us over and reduced our progress to a stumble. It was no surprise when the ski area shut down at 2:30 everyone was chased off the mountain. The forecast is calling for good weather early next week. I can hardly wait! The backcountry looks good around around here and I´m ready to check it out.

Argentino Comida

2006-08-11T14:58:00.000-07:00

Dan and Patrick psyche up for the 500 gram Bife Chorrizo. Each steak is the size of a large dictionary!

Went out for fantastic meals the last two nights. Argentina is famous for it´s steaks with good reason. Bife, as beef steaks are know here, are amazingly tasty, inredibly tender, ENORMOUS, and inexpensive. Combined the steak with a tasty red wine ($3-$5 a bottle) and you end up with a great meal. Last night we went out to a beautiful log home restaurant built with three trees growing through the central eating area and a front door that belongs in the Hobbit´s Shire. I´ve been ordering the Bife Lomo, or Tenderloin. One order, which is intended for one person only, comes with three separate Tenderloin steaks, each one is as big or bigger than what you would get in an restaurant back home. This $8 meal is melt-in-your-mouth tender and soooooooo tasty. Everyone leaves completely stuffed.

My order of Beef Tenderloin. Amazing!

Record Snowfall

2006-08-11T14:24:00.000-07:00

Ascending towards Cerro Lopez

The snow just keeps coming. The local papers are reporting that the current storm is setting a local ten year snowfall record. This comes as no surprise since everyday brings more and more powder. Yesterday I hooked up with an transplanted american, James, for a tour into the trees on Cerro Lopez. Trail breaking was exhausting, but we managed to make our way up onto a ridge and find some nice turns through an open forest of Lenga trees. Low down the snow was very wet and we finished the day off soaked to the bone. With the recent rapid snowfall we were feeling quite cautious about the avi conditions, which turned out to be a prudent outlook; we set off two small slides passing over convex rolls and heard a huge slide rip down the mountain across the valley. The day ended with an exciting ride home in James´rear wheel drive camper van. We loaded several enormous boulders in for extra weight and managed to navigate the snowy roads home safely.
James floats through the Lenga forest

More tree skiing

Socializing vs. Skiing

2006-08-09T14:50:00.000-07:00

Argentino Night Life

Last night I went out for drinks with some of the skiers i have recently met. Here in argentina, night life starts quite late and goes through til the morning, which is not a good situation for those trying to get out for a ski tour. We had made a plan to do a small tour from the ski resort, but as the evening progressed the plan was changed to a later start and everntually forgotten. whoops! Regardless, I wound up listening to a great live band til 4 am with some folks from the hostel I'm staying at. Today I decided to get a bit of cardio excercie and toured up the ski resort in the afternoon. I think I'm a bit out of shape after my 3 week paddling trip in july. it felt good to get some excercise, and when the weather improves it'll be great to get out!

Getting some excercise at Cerro Cathedral

Powder Turns

2006-08-08T17:02:00.000-07:00

Had a great time last night; I got invited to a argentinian family dinner for asado (meat bbq). It was very tasty! I also met a local ski tourer there which was a big plus. This morning I caught the bus up to the ski resort and met someone named patrick who wearing scarpa matrix boots in the parking lot. He turned out to be a solid ski tourer, so we spent the day ripping around in some great powder. We then met up with the argentinian skiers I met at the asado and his friend jorge, a local ski guide who I had been playing phone tag with. They took us off piste to some awesome powder! All in all it was a great day and I´m even more stoked on bariloche now. I can see a good touring crew coming together and I´m really pumped for the weather to clear so we can get out the Refugio Frey, a nearby hut with excellent terrain!

Bootpacking towards some good off piste

Patrick enjoying some fine Bariloche powder.

On the boards!

2006-08-07T09:13:00.000-07:00

Whew! I arrived in Bariloche yesterday evening, 28 hours after leaving home. Since I had only gotten 4 hours sleep the night before I left, and only managed a few hours more during the time spent on planes and in airports, I was pretty exhausted. The hostel I have booked myself into (Hostel 41 Below) turned out to be awesome and filled with friendly people, so shortly after arriving I headed out with a group of travellers for some classic local food: steak and red wine. I could not believe the size of the steaks! I ordered a tenderloin and was amazed to find that the individual order included 3 steaks, each of which was as large you would get from a restaurant back in Canada. The wine and steak was incredibly tasty and I went to bed very full. I had debated taking the next day off to recover, but decided to head to the hill for a day of skiing. The season is going very well here and there we’re in the middle of a significant storm, so there is lots of powder to be had. Because of the storm it won’t be worth heading into the backcountry for a bit. (storms here come with very high winds). I had a great day of turns and managed to meet a few other folks keen to tour once the weather improves. I’ve been focused on hooking up with backcountry skiers and have a bunch of names and numbers to start with. It sounds like there are a number of backcountry skiers here so I think things will work out well. Last night I was exhausted. I slept for 12 hours and I’m taking today off to relax and get back on track. So far I really like Bariloche and can easily see myself spending the entire month based here.

Riding lifts at Cerro Cathedral

The trees are beautiful down here.

In argentina!

2006-08-05T07:18:00.000-07:00

Argentina is great! I'm currently sitting in the Buenas Aires Airport on a three hour layover and I'm already loving this place. Perhaps I'm just excited to be nearly finished with the long flights, I've completed 14 hours flying and have only 2 more to go beore arriving in Bariloche. It's tons of fun being in a new country and getting to use my Spanish again after many years of negelct. I had a slight scare when my bank card wasn't working at any of the cash machines at the airport. Contrary to mom's suggestion I didn't bring much in the way of cash or traveller's cheques and for a moment I had visions of spending a month down here scraping by on the little cash I had. Luckily A bank close to the airport had a cash machine that likes my VanCity card. phew! I got onto an earlier flight to Bariloche and will be there by 3:15 this afternoon. It's chilly here (but not cold) and I'm starting to feel like I'm back in winter. I can hardly wait to get onto the boards, hopefully tomorrow!

Off to the airport!

2006-08-04T08:31:00.000-07:00

Got 4 hours of sleep last night but now I'm packed and off to the airport. I can hardly wait!
matt

Objectives

2006-08-03T01:09:00.000-07:00

Here are some of the volcanoes I'd like to ski off while in south america:

Llaima

Villarrica

Osorno

Lonquimay

Lanin

Getting Ready!

2006-08-03T01:03:00.000-07:00

A day and a half left before I take off for bariloche! I've spent the last while getting life here in order and I'll spend tomorrow packing. Things are looking good!