Having parted from our friends for the time, Matt and I dragged our gear through the streets down to what is staff housing. We had been told that there were often rooms for rent among the lifties and resort staff. In what had become a theme of disappointment leading to great opportunity, all the rooms there were filled. Instead, we bumped into some friends from Colorado. After all the hellos we talked about how the skiing had been. While it had been sunny and dry for the last few days, there was a storm rapidly approaching.

Like El Nino in North America or the monsoons of Asia, storms have a way of taking on mythic properties. These onslaughts are less forces of nature than acts of angry gods. They tear in and often times wreak havoc with everything in their path, leaving proof of their power in their wake. In the Argentinean Andes, the Santa Rosa is that storm. Now, fresh into Lenas and ready for something big, it seemed that Matt and I may have arrived on the eve of this awesome event.

As is the nature of transient places, people are always coming and going and thusly looking for places to stay or rides out of town. Matt and I met up with a few like minded souls…those who didn’t mind stacking the bunks deep in order to keep the expenses down, and ended getting a couple beds in a two room place two minutes from the lifts. This new home would only cost us fifty American for the week. We set up shop, grabbed some food from the little grocery a few minutes away, and slept our first night in Lenas.

The morning broke sunny, with slushy slopes and bluebird skies…nothing unusual for South American skiing. Twenty dollar lift tickets saw us headed up incredible peaks, taking in the impressive terrain. Like a lot of Chilean resorts, all of Las Lenas is above tree line. Instead of gladed bowls and tight runs through Douglas firs, it offers steep faces and narrow chutes into deep valleys. Like Whistler on roids, this mountain has all the gnar you could need. Ahead of us on the lift, fatty boards dangled from chairs full or visiting shredders, everyone pointing out lines and clanking poles in anticipation.

Like an invading army, a line of skiers attacked the slopes ahead of us. Following in close succession, I saw Matty rip off the cornice and drop onto a 45 degree face for the first run of the day. I started to get a feel for the skiing ahead of me. Snow, deep and heavy like the B.C. coast range, padded every turn. Lines started to flow together and confidence grew. Run after run we explored the mountain like kids at a new super kick-ass playground. There are no words to aptly describe skiing or the feeling it induces. All I can say is that I felt that euphoria that wells up in the pit of your stomach, spreads to your throat, and burst out as a yell. There, in the shadow of Lenas’ legendary granite spires, I took another step toward my skiing dreams. After hours of shredding, as the sun light turned golden on our faces, we headed down.

After we got home, shared stories and cleaned up, we set out to experience the other facets of Las Lenas. Argentina is known for a few things, not the least of which are beef, wine and hot chicks. Let it be said that if you like to eat, get drunk, and make an idiot of yourself on the dance floor, there are few better places than Las Lenas.

Matt and I got a posse together and we headed to one of the many awesome restaurants in the village. Make no mistake; these places are nice enough that if they were in Whistler, no ski bum in the valley could afford to go there. But therein lies another of Lenas’ beauty parts…it’ll make princes of paupers. Even on a limited budget, you can eat and drink like you’re rich. The steaks are incredible and the wine is cheap and plentiful. After filling our gullets with the outstanding grub, we headed to a Lenas landmark…UFO.

UFO is the kind of place where Argentinean beauties dance on the bar above drunken skiers. Lloyd Christmas would say “it’s a place where the beer flows like wine and the women flock like the salmon of Capistrano.” Crowds of people slam “vodka-speeds”, the Argentinean equivalent to everyone’s favorite Red Bull-vodka, and shake their shit like they have rhythm. It’s a flaming shots, breaking glasses, hanging from the rafters sort of place. Here at UFO, pro shreds mingle with students from Buenos Aires and Gringos try out their Spanish on Argentinean chicks. Everyone has a good time, and everyone gets drunk.

When I awoke the next morning, I was more than a little relieved to see that the storm had arrived and socked in the mountain; precious time to sleep off my hangover. As the storm raged outside, Matt and I played crib and drank espresso at the cafes in the village. This is another true thing about Las Lenas during the Santa Rosa; you get used to a lot of down time. For another two days we amused ourselves and got to know the other people there. There were skiers from ever section of the globe and more than a healthy representation from Canada and Colorado. Bonds were forged quickly, and soon there was a solid crew. Days whiling away the time turned into nights of debauchery. Outside, Santa Rosa roared mightily, dumping heavy flakes on everything around her.

The morning the storm broke there was mass exodus into the peaks. Everyone was keyed up to see what Rosa had left, and it was a bigger present than any one had expected. After the three days of storm, we would measure the snow in meters.

Some of the best terrain at Lenas is off of the Marte. The Marte is the equivalent to Whistler’s peak chair, except that it is perched far more precariously on the mountain. The lift poles jut out of the slope at odd angles, hammered and bent by avalanches. A ride up the Marte is as scary a lift ride as you can imagine. Alas, we wouldn’t have to worry about it. Buried in snow, the Marte was closed until it could be dug out. I had never experienced anything like this before. What did they mean, “dug out”? Only when ski patrol started offering lift tickets and snow cat rides up to expert skiers willing to help dig out this highest lift did I understand.

Eager to get the terrain the Marte accessed open, we strapped on beacons and packs, boarded snow cats for a lift to the peak. After an anxious 45 minutes through avalanche terrain, we hopped off and clicked in, dropping into another world.

Enjoying windblown pow under the lift and told not to stray any further, we followed the line of chairs overhead as they dropped over rollers and down into the valley. Cresting a blind drop, we all saw what the problem, and our challenge, was. There, just ahead of us, the lift cable and chairs themselves were buried under what bad to be 8 meters of snow. We eased down, amazed, to where the lifts disappeared into the very slope we skied on. It seems that the snow that the Santa Rosa had given us was both a blessing and a curse.

Over the next couple of days, crews of twelve would head up in shifts and dig at the hundred meter long, two meter deep trench required to free the lift. Determined to get the mountain opened, Joe shredder, pro skiers, and patrollers alike worked side by side and shovel by shovel. After we dug, we cruised around the rest of the mountain, free lift tickets in hand. Good snow on great terrain made for lifetimes of amazing lines.

I would like to say that I got to reap the reward we had worked for on the Marte. I did not. After a few more days of digging and skiing, my time was up. In fact, it was past up. I had to be on a flight back to the states out of Santiago in a little over a day.

The rest is a blur. Leaving Matt to a couple more weeks of shredding with our new friends, I said goodbye to the crew and hopped on a bus back to Mendoza. After a white knuckle, turbulent flight over the Andes I landed in Santiago. Transported from the winter wonderland of Las Lenas, I poked around the streets and markets of the city, warm in the seventy degree sunshine. My flight took off that night, and half a day later I was back in Colorado.

As I sit in a coffee shop in Boulder, writing this, I can feel South America beckon. I think of Chile, of Argentina. I think of the time I had there and the friends I shared it with. Here, the hot sun is floods through a window onto me, and my skis are home collecting dust. I want to ski. I ache to ski. I want to call Matty and convince him to get Richard and Dommer and Slicer together and head south…way south. Maybe I will call tomorrow, or next week, or maybe next summer. All I know is that I will call, and that I will be there, on the other side of the world, with my friends. We will make our tracks on new faces in new places, and we will have adventures we can only dream of. Until then, I will be thankful that we have this life and live in this amazing time where the doldrums cannot hold us, and adventure awaits.
Be sure to Check out Nates other Ariticles:

Summer Shredding Part I
Summer Shredding Part II
Summer Shredding Part III
In your Soul

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