Day 10 - August 24, 2009

Phrase of the day: heli skiing do hombre pobre (poor man's heli skiing)

Amberley, Mark, and I at SkiArpa!

Today, we go cat skiing at Valle El Arpa! Arpa is a ski resort with no runs or chair lifts--just mountains, powder and two snowcats that allow you to access untouched terrain without a helicopter or hours of hiking. That's right, cat-skiing at Arpa is the poor man's heli skiing, and it was awesome!!

The adventure began in Lo Calvo, about 20-kilometers north of our hostel. There, the pavement ends, giving way to a dirt road that leads to Arpa. We traveled for about an hour on the unpaved road, watching it turn from dirt, to mud, to snow. Because the road to Arpa is so treacherous, you must have a vehicle with high clearance and 4-wheel drive, as well as an experienced driver to get up the mountain safely. There is practically no organized transportation to Arpa and, therefore, it was extremely expensive to hire a driver--it cost us USD $259 to hire someone with an appropriate vehicle to drive us up the mountain.

They are kind of hard to see, but, if you look closely, you can see about 10 switchbacks going through the valley and up the mountain. Look just above the rocks and brush where the snow starts. This is where the switchbacks start.

Some of the switchbacks are so tight that you have to make 3-point turns to get around them.

After traveling about an hour up the mountain, there is a point on the unpaved road where it is impossible to travel any further by car because of deep snow. There is a small turnout just before the road turns to snow where everyone parks and waits for the snowcat to pick them up and take them to the small lodge, which is located about half a mile further up the snowy path.

This is where we parked and waited for the snow cat to come and pick us up.

The staff consisted of 8 people, all of who were extremely professional and welcoming. As soon as we arrived at the lodge, the staff went over all necessary safety procedures and each guest was given an avalanche beacon.

This is the tiny ski lodge built into the side of the mountain.

It was a day filled with amazing views, 900-meter vertical runs, wide-open valleys, and powder-powder-powder!

This is the snow cat track up the mountain to our first run.

The view at the top of our first run was amazing.

We could see Aconcagua in the distance. Aconcagua is the highest peak in all of the Americas--it stands above 22,000 feet.

This is my inside the snow cat waiting to go up the mountain for another run.

Day 9 - August 23, 2009

Phrase of the day: un acto azar de simpatico (a random act of kindness)

I experienced one of the greatest acts of kindness today - I will never forget it! Amberley , Mark and I got on a bus to Los Andes - a small town about 40 miles north of Santiago - and it was quite the excursion.

For some strange reason we decided that we would walk about half a mile to the bus station instead of take a taxi. Now, you must remember that Amberley, Mark and I have three bags each that easily total over 200lbs: our backpacking backpacks, out snowboard bags and our smaller normal-sized backpacks.

A second issue was that I seriously injured my back a few days ago - a paramedic that was staying at my hostel checkout out my back and told me that I broke the spinus process of one of my vertebrate. I was experiencing some major back pain. Not surprisingly, about 5-minutes into the walk, we all realized that the half mile treck was going to be a painful adventure, however, we decided to keep going.

A little while later, when I think my back can't take anymore, the coolest thing happened - a random girl walked up to me and took the handle of my snowboard bag. She was offering to help carry some of the weight of my bags. The girl spoke absolutely no English, but she could see that I was seriously struggling and she decided to help. Due to the language barrier, we walked in silence for about 10-minutes until we were close enough to see the bus station. I will never forget this act of kindness and, when the opportunity arises, I will be sure to pay it forward by offering help to someone else in need.

Day 7 - August 21, 2009

Phrase of the day: La día en Santiago = A day in Santiago

We arrived in Santiago around 9:30pm last night and we all exhausted. We had been in the shuttle for over three hours; there was a lot of traffic coming down the mountain. Luckily, the hostel we booked in Santiago put the four of us – Amberley, Mark, Rich, and I – in a huge six-person room all to ourselves. It was nice to have so much space – If you have ever stayed in shared rooms while traveling before, you know to appreciate it when you have a lot of space because it is often a rare occurrence.

There's so much space :)

The next morning we all took hot showers – this was the best thing ever considering the fact that I haven’t taken a hot shower since I arrived in Chile; the showers at the hostel in Farellones were sometimes luke warm, but mostly freezing. After doing laundry and checking emails, we decided to walk and check out the city of Santiago.

We walked through the main square of town and went to the fish market for lunch.

This part of the square has chess boards built into the tables and people come from all over to play.

Yummy, fresh fish.

There is a ton of art everywhere in Santiago: architecture, monuments, graffiti art, etc. Much of the graffiti art is political and some of it purely asthetic. But the cool thing was, almost all of the graffiti was positive. It seemed to me there was much more art than tagging.

There are monuments everywhere. They are on every corner, in ever square and in front of every building.

This one was my favorite.

A funny thing I noticed about Santiago is they have a lot of Viking bars and restaurants – that’s right, I said Viking J

Due to the fact that we all thought the idea of a Viking establishment was hilarious, we decided to go in one and have a beer. There were shields, swords, axes and fur on every wall, as well as on the ceiling. We ended up getting sloshed and having a really fun night.

Day 6 - August 20, 2009

Phrase of the day: último día en Farellones = last day in Farellones

I don’t think today could have been anymore perfect. We scheduled a shuttle to pick us up and take us to Valle Nevado.

This is Valle Nevado. It is known as one of the most modern ski centers in Chile mostly due to its diverse mountain terrain and speedy chair lifts. This is a hilarious statistic because there are still T-bar and Palmer lifts everywhere—just not as many as most of the other ski resorts. Because of the big dump a couple days ago, the road and most of the chair lifts for Valle Nevado weren’t able to open until this morning. You know what that means; it’s going to be an epic pow day!!

Since we are now on South America time, the shuttle showed up over 30-minutes late; to be expected. It takes about 30-minutes to get to the mountain and we – Amberley, Rich, Cliff, Mark, and I – meet up with Derek and Sue at the ticket office right away. These are people that I have met at my hostel in Farellones and we have all become great friends over the last week.

Finally, around 10:30am we are all on the first chair lift; luckily it is a Thursday and the mountain is not very crowded.

We head up the Los Andes lift with one thing in mind – Powder! After scoping out the best places to go, we decide to traverse off to the left and hike for about 10-minutes up a ridge where the snow has yet to be touched. Amberley, Rich, Mark, Sue, Derek and I made it to the top; we lost Cliff somewhere along the way. You know what they say, "There are no friends on pow days!"

This is Amberley, Rich, Mark, and Sue at the top of the hike.

This is Derek and I goofing off before we drop in.

The ride down from the ridge was amazing and hilarious all at the same time. The terrain was steep and the snow was light, fluffy and untouched – it was definitely the best run of the whole day. What made it unbelievably funny was the following; a few seconds after Derek started his way down the ridge he had built up some speed and, out of nowhere, a huge rabbit popped out of the snow and pretty much jumped right onto his skis. As you can imagine, this was quite startling and Derek almost went down at mock speed. No of us had ever seen anything like it before and we just about died laughing J

The rest of the day was awesome. We had fresh pow all day and enjoyed every minute. We headed back to the hostel in the afternoon, gathered our bags and got on a shuttle to Santiago. The sunset that evening was the most unreal sunset I think I have ever seen.

Also, the mountains were still covered with fresh snow and the view while driving was beautiful.

Remember the crazy switch-backs I told you about on Day 1.

I was in Farellones for six days and it was a great experience. I had three unreal pow days on the mountain and I met some people that I will be friends with forever. Now, it’s on to the next adventure – Ski Arpa here we come!