Photos- Hans Petter Hval
Film edited by Espen Kristiansen

I had seen Pedro around, but you see everyone around in Las Lenas. It isn't big and everyone there is filming a movie, writing an article, being a pro or working for Biglines. All the Gringos stand out with their next year's skis, goggles, and gear stacked in the corner of the restaurant while they point dumbly at the menu to order. It's apre-ski on the deck and everyone is jostling to be seen, but Pedro sticks out because he is just being normal. He is chatting casually to a friend in Norwegian and then orders a drink in Spanish from the server who is now also a friend.





Photo- Lars Kristian Haugen.

Sometime later we were introduced and I had to wonder if Pedro was his appropriated Spanish name to lure the sumptuous Argentine chicas, or his real name. It turns out Pedro was born in Portugal and moved to Norway when he was 6 years old.

As the days wore on and the Marte Chair remained off limits, we crossed paths poaching internet in the village and Pedro, 26, came out of his shell. He was just another guy stoked to be in Las Lenas skiing pow, drinking good wine, eating the best steak and meeting new people. He had every reason to be stoked though, because as a self-proclaimed 'city-boy' who wasn't a skier until 2 years before, here he now was on the other side of the world with a ticket to ride as an emerging pro-skier. Read it and weep. Pedro hadn't skied in over ten years until the Spring of 2005 when he went to help a friend from University who organized the Norwegian Freeski Nationals.

He bought skis, poles, boots, etc at the venue in order to get around and follow all the cool, new people that he had just met. He hung out and partied with the guys from BigTrix - a Norwegian website-slash-film production company. They invited him to come help film and market their second release 'The Return of the King' and he filmed almost the entire Norwegian segment.







After that Pedro was part of the team and worked behind the lens doing whatever needed to be done and skiing a tonne in the process. He decided he wanted to do a season in the Alps so he made Engelberg his base and pounded shots of ambition as he drank beside the revolving door of pro-skiers that the Alps attracts.

"Yeah, I wanted to be a pro and be like the other guys and be in front of the camera," he told me unabashedly while we waited for Facebook to load. "I had the wrong mentality, and the guys pulled me back down and told me I needed to ski for myself, and not because it was cool. I wanted to ski in "The Powder Diaries", but they just flat out told me I wasn't good enough or as good as I thought I was."

Since then, he says he has toned it down and is skiing for himself and the results have been far greater and the experience more rewarding.







With an obvious flair for athletic pursuits, Pedro's dad made him quit skiing as a kid because it was too expensive and so he played soccer in the summer and ice hockey in the winter. Hockey turned out to be a passion and he was good at it. He received a scholarship for high school and played for the National U/18 team.
"We had had 4 hours of school and then 4 hours of hockey. I quit hockey because I started studying at University. I wonder now where would I be if I kept skiing, but then again maybe I wouldn't be skiing at all."

After picking up skiing again in the Spring of 2005, he was invited to join a focus group for Helly Hansen because they wanted to know what people new to skiing thought of the company- "corporate stuff". Being in contact with HH, he became a demo rider for their protypes and that has evolved into joining the team.






On one particular afternoon, Pedro's email finally loads and he learns that Helly Hansen are really impressed with him and he is invited to a product shoot in Oslo with the International team. Helly Hansen are hooking him up and footing some of the bills and Dragon optics is on board also, but Pedro doesn't have a ski sponsor yet. I suggest he seek out a hair product sponsor to which he casually replies, "I never expected to be where I am now. I'm just taking it as it comes."






Pedro rolls into the foyer another afternoon and plugs in the cumbersome power adapter that we all sport, but the sparks are flying off of him as he recounts his day.

"Heli-skiing was something I have dreamed about. Some of the guys got tired of the waiting game so I decided to pursue the heli, to try and motivate and reward the guys. On my first day heli-skiing I got a 1200m first descent. I'm easily stoked so needless to say, you can imagine how pumped I am."

Pedro is perma-stoked though. As he says, "I am very easily stoked, because I don't have a lot of experience. The other guys laugh, but I'm just thrilled to ski."

You feel like you just skied the run-of-your-life he is so buoyant.

"I got it in my head to ski it top to bottom. I wasn't skiing that run for the camera. I was skiing the-run-of-my-life and I just wanted to do it aesthetically and smoothly, and I did."

Throughout our time in Las Lenas I hear about the mountains in Norway and begin to wish I were there instead of the Mecca that is Las Lenas. He describes a camping trip after a comp in the north of Norway.

"There is a group of islands that look like a musical note and Lofoten is the top flat island of the note. It was early spring and the days were getting longer. At that time of year the alpin glow is spectacular and you can also see the Northern lights. We were camped on the water and behind we had these majestic mountains. They are only 1000mts, but from the top it is a long run. We would row our boat from one mountain to another with our skis, get out and start hiking straight up."

He talks about another destination, Stryn, where you camp at 800m and the resort is 1300m with 7-800m of vert. There are 2 lifts and 1 t-bar. The touring off the t-bar is apparently "out of this world" and the season is normally early May until end of July. Here the sun sets at 11.30pm.

"This year we were lucky. We skied 30cms of pow on the 16th June."

Sitting there, smack in the middle of the Andes and with a winter in the Alps under his belt, the timelessness of hanging out with friends and the beauty of his homeland aren't lost on Pedro. Even as the ski world comes to him, he is naive and indifferent to it in the same way a pubescent girl mightn't comprehend the attention from the senior boys. It's all new and exciting to him.






Coming into this winter Pedro was keen to take advantage of the North American contacts he made in Las Lenas and hop across the pond to hit Whistler, Utah and perhaps Alaska for some pow and a few comps. "I'm still a dreamer and there is a lot of terrain I haven't skied."

Filming with BigTrix was on the agenda and generally shredding whilst working and skiing for a travel company from Norway.

I received an email from Pedro only the other day though and learnt he had fractured a bone in his ankle early season and hadn't skied since January. He sounded as jubilant as ever though despite the set back and said, "This injury has made me more motivated to come back stronger."

And here's hoping that he does.