North and South: Skiing the Dream, All Year
What was the best vacation you had last year? I’ll bet it was heli-skiing. And what’s the one you’re looking most forward to this year? **See previous answer. Every year we make the mistake of getting caught up in the alluring summer activity cycle, where we almost forget about skiing. But what if you just made skiing your year round vacation? It’s possible, with the help of one magical thing: the equator.
It’s hot outside. That layer of summer office film is becoming increasingly harder to ignore. Your miniature summer vacation has already happened: a mosquito infested camping trip, wherein the trailer hitch wasn’t hooked up properly, resulting in the boat impaling the vehicle. There was almost an in-family apocalypse due to the nuclear and emotional fallout of this traumatic event. In a vain attempt to bring everyone back together, you took your extended family sailing. “Moored” off the coast of a rocky island, you drifted dangerously close to shore, and you broke three fingers swimming the (borrowed) boat and family back to safety. Now you’re just sweating it out until temperatures drop at the end of September. Long and short, you’re failing at summer. What you should have done…is gone skiing.
Farrelones is a little town one hour away from Santiago, in Chile, and accessible from it, are three world-class ski resorts: La Parva, El Colorado and Valle Nevado. The snow is good, the crowds are minimal, the food is great, the wine is better.
From the front lines: Kaytlin Hughes, Freeride World Tour competitor and skiing enthusiast, let me in on what’s happening right now, in Farrelones. (Apparently, the last two weeks has been a holiday for Chileans, and they have been flocking to the mountains)…sigh.
“People are starting to roll in this week for the [Freeride World Tour Qualifier] competition. I’m pretty excited to have some more gringos in town. La Parva is a classic resort, with tons of access to on and off-piste trails (or on-pista and afuera-pista, as they call it here). El Colorado is more of a family resort, but offers some incredible extreme side country access, called Santa Teresa, where the competition is going to be held. Valle Nevado, as far as I know, is full of a bazillion Brazilians.”
**Valle Nevado has lots to offer, including a fantastic view of El Plomo, the highest peak in the Andes.
Back to Kaytlin…**
“The typical gathering for dinner is an asado, which is a barbecue with delicious local meat and plenty of wine. These are the best nights with friends and family, and the invites are usually for 6 or 7 PM, but don’t expect to eat until 10 PM, and do expect to crawl into bed around 4 AM, full from food and drunk from too much wine. You should probably hit up a discoteca somewhere in there (they’re everywhere) and dance to some reggaeton. After a day of skiing, an afternoon of happy hour 2-for-1 beers, dinner asado and late night mass production lines of piscolas (pisco and coke, great at the time, terrible in the morning), you have had the full Chilean ski experience.
This sounds suspiciously familiar, doesn’t it?
Here at Last Frontier, during our winter, the best kind of days play out the same way. Great skiing, then afternoon beers to relax the legs and provide some time to talk about how great the skiing was. After that, a delicious meal with lots of wine to talk about how great the skiing will be tomorrow! Then, maybe some late night dancing or a campfire – before crashing into bed to do it all over again. If you just can’t get enough of what we do up here, and what we will continue to do up here all through the 2013/2014 winter, you should probably head down south now, to “remind” yourself why skiing (apres-ski included), is the best “sport” in the world. Me gusta. Te gusta?