Day 5 - August 19, 2009

Word of the day: frescas huellas = fresh tracks

It snowed all day yesterday and all last night. The storm was still clearing when we got to the mountain this morning.

We decided to ride at El Colorado. There were few people on the mountain and we had a great pow day.

Day 3 - August 17, 2009

Word of the day: schop [chop] = pint

It started snowing again late last night and it is now a wintery blizzard outside with zero visibility. We all decide to take the day off from snowboarding and sleep in. By 12:00pm everyone is hungry, so Amberley, Derick, Kevin, Mark, Cliff, Rich, and I decide to make the 15-minute walk in the blizzard to the restaurant at the resort.

After lunch we head straight to the bar where we drink ourselves silly until 6:00pm when we finally head back to the hostel for dinner. After dinner we continue to consume every different kind of alcohol we can get our hands on – beer, tequila, pisco sour, vodka, and red wine – what a combination! We easily had enough alcohol at the hostel to last for at three more days, however, only three beers were left in the fridge by the night’s end – we do good work!

It was a great day, full of hilarious events. Kevin was pushed and fell backwards off his chair while playing Yahtzee, Amberley drank vodka out of her shoe, I puked and had to be physically carried to bed twice, and there were numerous occasions where cameras were secretly stolen and used to take inappropriate pictures that were meant to be found by their owners days later.

This was the beginning of the day of drinking... just a couple beers at the local pub.

Then, for some strange reason, I though it would be a good idea if we started taking shots of tequila.

And, this is what happens when I try to drink the same amount as boys twice my size. Apparently I thought I could hang with the big boys :)

Day 2 - August 16, 2009

Word of the day: polvo = powder

It seems I am good luck and that I have brought the snow with me because it started snowing about the time I got on my flight in Orange County yesterday morning and didn’t stop snowing until late last night. It is a blue bird day with no clouds and about 4 feet of fresh pow.

This was the view from my hostel when I got up this morning... Isn't it pretty!!

There are three ski resorts in Farellones – El Colorado, La Parva and Valle Nevado. Everyone woke up around 7:30am and got ready to go up on the mountain. We decide to head to El Colorado for the day. We ride from 9:30am to 3:30pm. It was one of the most amazing powder days I have ever had. El Colorado isn’t a very big mountain, but it has a lot of steep terrain that is great for powder runs. According to the Chilean locals, the mountain was considered pretty crowded today. However, it was dead compared to a crowded day at an American ski resort.

We had fresh powder lines almost all day!!

The scenery from the mountain is unbelievable. The gorgeous freshly powdered mountains seem to go on forever and I don’t think anything could be more beautiful.

This was one of the runs we took later in the afternoon! I love it when you are above the clouds :)

Most of the chair lifts at El Colorado are not really chair lifts at all; they are T-bars. The funny thing is, I was actually kind of nervous to go up the first one because I haven’t used a T-bar since I was probably 5-years old and on skis. For those of you who have used a rope-tow before, it is different than a T-bar. With a T-bar, you actually have to put the tow between your legs and it is pretty awkward when you are on a snowboard. Also, most of the T-bars access pretty steep terrain, so you really have to hold on and put in a lot of effort in order to get to the top of the lift.

This is a T-bar and they are everywhere in Chile.

I dropped three different cliffs today – all about 15-footers. I tumbled pretty bad on the landing of one of them. I definitely won for best fall of the day. Despite the fall, I feel great right now – I’m sure I’ll be soar tomorrow.

What a way to start out my trip - first day is a blue bird powder day.

Day 1 - August 15, 2009

Word of the day: nieve = snow

It is now 7:20am and my plane is about to land in Santiago, Chile. I open the window shutter for the first time since takeoff about nine hours earlier – I have slept almost the entire flight – and I start to get really excited. It is pouring rain in town, which means it is dumping snow up on the mountain.

I get off the plane, pay the US international travel fee – $131 yuck!, – make my way through customs, and head to baggage claim. Amberley has already been in Chile for a week, so she arranged for a driver to pick me up from the airport and bring me up the mountain to meet her at our hostel in Farellones. I pick up my bags at baggage claim and head to the exit to find my ride. As soon as I get to the door, I am bombarded by taxi drivers trying to gain my business. It is extremely crowded and very hard to guide my snowboard bag through all the people to find my driver. Luckily, an airport employee sees me struggling and offers to help. He speaks English and we are able to find my driver in just a couple of minutes. The driver’s name is Jorge and he doesn’t speak any English, however, we are still able to communicate a little. He helps me with my bags and we walk outside into the rain and head toward the car.

As soon as I see Jorge’s car a small feeling of anxiety comes over me. It is a small silver Dodge Neon and I immediately realize that my snowboard bag is not going to fit in the car. I ask Jorge what we are going to do with the bag and he points to the roof of the car and shows me two bungee cords. Now, remember that it is pouring rain outside and my snowboard bag not only has my snowboard gear in it, but also most of my clothes. But, what can I do? So, we tie the bag to the top of the car and get on our way.

Driving through Santiago is like driving through any other major US city. Huge advertising billboards, malls, people, and large trucks and SUVs are everywhere. (For some reason, I expected there to be fewer large vehicles here than in the US).

After driving for about 15-minutes, we pull up and stop in front of a business titled SkiVan. Jorge informs me that I will be traveling the rest of the way with this company. So, we get out of the car and transfer my bags into an 8-passenger Honda van. There are four other people in the van. None of them speak any English, but they are very nice and welcoming all the same.

As we get out of the city, we pull onto a very narrow windy road and start our way up the mountain. There are rockslides everywhere that the driver must carefully avoid. It is a two lane road, so avoiding the rock slides in our lane means driving into the opposite lane around blind corners – luckily there are barely any other cars on the road. The narrow windy road quickly turns into the worst switchbacks I have ever seen and I watch the rain turn to sleet and then to snow, as we get higher in altitude. Despite the fact that I am traveling on a horribly dangerous road with few guard rails while it is dumping snow in a van with no 4-wheel drive with four people that I cannot communicate with, I feel completely safe and peaceful staring out the window. I have an overwhelming sense of calmness and satisfaction with the world around me. The mountains are covered in fresh snow and are absolutely beautiful. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else at this moment in time.

This is the road leading up to my hostel. It was dumping!

After about 1.5 hours of driving – Farellones is 37k outside of Santiago – we pull up to my hostel and start to unload the van. There is already over a foot of new snow on the ground and it is falling straight down and very fast. It is so pretty. I immediately hear Amberley’s voice and start yelling her name. She runs down stairs and we give each other a big hug. We haven’t seen each other in three and a half years. We bring my bags in the hostel and spend the rest of the day catching up.

I meet the other housemates – Derick, Kevin, Mark, Rich, Cliff, and Jack. Derick and Kevin are from Colorado, Mark is from the UK, Rich is from New Zealand, Cliff is from San Francisco, and Jack is from Australia. They are all awesome and stoked that it is snowing out.

How my snowboard trip to South America came to be :)

When I was 17 years old I took, what was supposed to be, a 3-day-weekend trip to Mammoth with three friends – Mark, Erin and Matt. This trip turned out to be one of the most disastrous, yet greatest trips of my life.

We were staying with a friend of Mark’s, Amberley, who lived in the mountain’s employee housing units. Erin, Matt and I had never met Amberley before. She was from Australia and came to the States after her first year of University to work and learn to snowboard. We rocked up late Friday night and brought all our gear inside – we had to sneak in because, at that time, employee-housing-residents were not allowed to have overnight guests.

To make a very long story short, I’ll just list the important events of the trip. First, we lost the keys to the car and had to order a new key from the dealership and have it sent to us. Second, we missed two days of school because the new car key didn’t arrive until Wednesday morning. Third, Erin got arrested for using our friend Cassie’s season pass and got a $375 fine. Lastly, the employee housing authorities found out Amberley had overnight guests the last night we were in Mammoth and, therefore, she got evicted from employee housing.

Despite all the disasters of the trip, all of us had an amazing time. We snowboarded, went to the hot springs, had sushi for the first time and partied every night. Amberley and I became great friends over those five days. After being evicted, she was able to move in with a friend who had an open loft and everything turned out to be just fine. She came and stayed with me at my mom’s house in Huntington Beach for two weeks when the ski season ended before heading back to Australia. We have been able to meet up a few times over the years and have consistently kept in touch through email.

This is a picture of Amberley and I the last time we saw each other - January 2006 - before our trip to South America.

In February of 2008, I got an email from Amberley asking if I wanted to plan a snowboard trip to South America for after we both graduate from University. So, a year and a half later here we are – snowboarding in Argentina and Chile.