The Last Week in Bariloche

My past (and last) week in Bariloche was both busy and enjoyable, with good weather and two rounds of fresh snow. I ventured out on several side trips to take advantage of the turn in weather. The week began with a return to San Martin de los Andes to ski Chapelco and revisit the Miramas backcountry (both in the same vicinity). Following that, I headed to Villa La Angostura to reacquaint myself with Cerro Bayo and its backcountry terrain. Finally, after a few recovery days, I went on my last ski trip in the area with a visit to Cerro Lopez to enjoy some incredible scenery and amazing weather on the first day of spring.

Chapelco

A few days had passed since the last day of  guided trips and I was starting to get restless. I was in touch with Paul who I’d met on my first trip with Jorge to Frey. He was just finishing up some volcano trips in Chile and was heading back to Argentina by way of San Martin. I had also wanted to return to San Martin and ski more in the area so I decided to meet up with him. I departed Bariloche on the afternoon of Sunday, Sept 15th and made the 300KM drive to San Martin.

I wasn’t going to meet up with Paul until Tuesday so I visited the Chapelco resort on Monday as I hadn’t been yet. I drove up Monday morning, picking up a few hitchhiking skiers who were clearly going to the same place. Two of them only spoke Spanish, but the other was visiting from Buenos Aires and spoke understandable English. As soon as I told him I was from Vancouver he almost exploded with excitement. ‘You know Whistler?!!? This is so exciting that I meet someone from Whistler. I really want to go there! How is it, please tell!’ He knew everything about the mountain — exactly how far the drive from Vancouver was, the names of the runs, the names of the chairs. He was dying to go but hadn’t convinced a friend to come with him. We exchanged e-mails at the parking lot before heading our separate ways.

Monday was a good day to be on the hill. It had been snowing off and on in the area since Friday. There was at least a foot of new snow with mix of sun and cloud — it wasn’t too hot or too cold.  After a few short but sweet warmup laps on the upper chair I decided to venture a bit further out. Being on my own, I made conservative decisions and avoided the enticing chutes and runs that headed out into unfamiliar backcountry terrain. I ended up boot packing a ridge just a short ski down from the top lift. There was a reasonably nice face to ski that returned to the resort trails. The boot pack was already set and there was only one track on the face thus far. Perfect!

I ended up spending the rest of my day doing laps on that face. Only a hand full of other skiers and boarders were lapping it so it was possible to avoid crossing tracks. I had a chat with a group of friendly Alaskan skiers who had also been touring the area with skis in tow. On my last lap of the day I ran into a rather amusing fellow who was living and working in Santiago. When I first saw him, I was having a snack and a drink before strapping my skis to my pack to boot up the ridge; he was half way up the skiable face with his skins on. I couldn’t fathom why someone would be breaking trail up the face in 12+ inches of fresh, warming snow when there was a 10-15 minute boot pack that was well set. He was having quite the struggle. I started the hike when he was about 3/4 up.

I arrived at the top before him. While I was deciding where to ski down, he popped up onto the top of the ridge looking quite exhausted. I greeted him in Spanish and he recognized my accent and asked if I spoke English. I couldn’t quite identify his English accent and I don’t believe I ever asked where he was originally from. I commented on his track up and asked why he didn’t just hike. ‘Because I have randonnee, of course. You do not?’ he said. ‘Yeah, I do too. But it’s a lot easier to hike the ridge,’ pointing behind me. This clearly did not  compute for him. We talked some more. It turned out this was the first time he was trying out his brand new ‘randonnee’ gear. He’d never owned skins or used Dynafity bindings before. That explained a few things. I spent a little time giving him some pointers, we exchanged taking photos of each other, and then I went on my way.

I meandered back to the bottom of the resort and enjoyed the scenic drive back to San Martin along where I met up with Paul.

Miramas Backcountry

Tuesday, Paul and I decided to ski some backcountry terrain in behind the Refugio/canopy Miramas. I had been there the previous week with Jorge and Pablo and saved some of the important waypoints and tracks on my GPS so could retrace the necessary steps to get into the skiable terrain. We ran into the caretaker/owner of the refugio on the way up. ‘The road is icy,’ he said, ‘you park here?’ I pointed upwards and indicated I was hoping to park higher. He looked at the 4Runner, somewhat unconvinced, and finally agreed, ‘okay, you can follow me.’ We waited for him to get his clients in his beefy, lifted transport and followed behind. The road wasn’t so bad — there were a few icy bends and climbs towards the top but with enough momentum and a little drifting technique it wasn’t  hard to work through them.

Paul and I skinned around the ridge to a familiar valley. The snow was much better here than the previous week but already a big step down from yesterday. The warmer temperatures had left a crust in many areas. We stopped at one spot in the trees when we hit some soft snow. We climbed up for good tree run.

After our tree lap, we continued up the valley and made our way to the top of the summit I’d visited last week. At the top, we were assaulted by strong winds. Noses turning blue, we decided not to ski the promising south facing line that I’d eyed last week. As already noted, it was a committing run and I wasn’t interested in doing a proper evaluation of the snowpack with my face going numb. Instead, we opted for a ‘lovely’ ski down some breakable crust. Weee! We stayed high so that we could try another option; ski off a slightly corniced peak on the ridge we’d skinned around. It looked more protected from the wind.

The ski off the top of our little peak wasn’t half bad. We had a few nice turns in sheltered snow before we hit crust in the brush. At that point we started our traverse back to the car. Along the way, we stopped for another quick run in the trees and then continued the rest of the way to the vehicle.

We’d decided to ski Cerro Bayo on Wednesday so we drove straight from Miramas to Villa La Angostura to find a place to sleep.

Cerro Bayo

I really like this little resort. In some ways it’s more enjoyable than Cerro Catedral. It has far less in bounds terrain, but it’s quiet and has a lot of easily accessible options in the backcountry. There was a peak with an obvious ridge boot pack lookers right of the slope we skied the previous week that was the objective today. We had a few warmup runs in the resort before heading out there.

We didn’t need to put our skins on to get to the summit. Most of the trip involved boot packing rocky ridges. There was one short ski traverse before hiking the final ridge.

The ridge of the summit we were heading to was an nice hike with the view improving by the minute. There were a few short scrambly bits to provide entertainment. At one point I opted to lose a meter of elevation and do a quick scramble back up a few meters on solid rock while Paul took his chances scurrying on his hands and knees across a questionable lip.

At the top we spent some time goofing around taking pictures. My beard is now in full on bushy mode; I haven’t shaved since July 🙂

The run down was good but the quality of the snow wasn’t all we’d hoped for. In better snow it would be a great run top to bottom. The snow at the very top was a little wind affected with a slight crust and sluffed with each turn. I managed to knock myself over with some sluff and spent a few moments swearing and recovering my pole. After those first few turns, it was nice powder for a little ways  until we hit the crust we’d encountered yesterday. At this point, we decided to make our way back to the resort and ski something else along the way instead of hiking back up for another lap. We ended up skiing one more mellow slope into the valley overlooking Villa La Angostura.

Satisfied with the day, we headed back to the car and drove back to Bariloche to spend Thursday and Friday relaxing while more clouds and snow blew through. We were hoping to ski Cerro Lopez as soon as the sun returned.

Cerro Lopez

The sun was back on Saturday, Sept 21st, the first day of spring. I picked up Paul in the morning and we drove to the base of Cerro Lopez. There were supposedly great views and good skiing from the top. We started out hiking a well defined trail in our ski boots. After hitting snow, we continued a ways further before putting our skins on. Based on the tracks ahead of us, there were at least two other parties out this morning — a pair of hikers and a pair of skiers. The skiers had set a reasonable skin track through the upper portion of the forest so we followed their tracks.

As we were climbing we kept gazing at the big open face above tree line. This was complex avalanche terrain! We also made note of the large crown line on the right and quite a number of wet point releases. We made some guesses as to what we though the safe path up to the top would be. However, I don’t think either of us was feeling like rolling the dice on our analysis.

As we continued it was apparent the track we were following was diverging from the direction of the Cerro Lopez refugio and the open face. We were heading towards a different sub summit. I was more than fine with this as it seemed like a safer option than the main face.

We made it to the top and met the two Swiss women who’d set the track we followed. One of them was a guide and quite familiar with the local terrain. Apparently we were on the summit of Filo de las Cabras. We talked about the face of Cerro Lopez and ski routes. She confirmed that our presumed way up was more or less correct but added that it wasn’t a good day to do it (which we’d already decided). There were some compelling chutes off the south side of las Cabras that Paul really really wanted to ski. Again, the Swiss woman said not today, the new snow on an icy surface was a recipe for dangerous slides in the chutes and steep, open bowl below. Paul managed to fight the urge and we skied the safer face that we’d climbed up.

The snow on the way down was wet and heavy. The views, however, were simply stunning!

We continued to ski down through the trees, snow getting heavier and stickier as we continued. We skied a ways longer on the logging road and then eventually switched back to boot packing.

Along the way we tried visiting refugio Roca Negra for a drink but it wasn’t open. Onwards we plodded until we made it to our car, now surrounded by bus loads of high school students looking bored and disinterested with their surroundings. After asking one of the bus drivers to move their bus , we continued the scenic drive around Circuito Chico, past Llao Llao, and onwards to the city centre.

That evening, Paul and I ended up back Alto el Fuego; the best steak restaurant in town. Surprise, surprise, we ran into Jorge, Eric, and Jorge’s latest group of clients who’d just come down from a week in the Frey and Jakob huts.

Farewell Bariloche

I’m writing this post on my last day in Bariloche. Tomorrow morning, Sept 24th, I’ll be driving down south to visit El Chalten and El Calafate. Originally, I hadn’t planned on going that far south due to the distance involved and a fear of bad weather. I changed my mind after growing increasingly restless here and receiving glowing recommendations from a few others of the skiing and scenery further south.

It will be an exciting adventure. The drive is over 1500KM drive down which will result in 3000KM worth of driving back south to Santiago. Looking at Google maps it doesn’t seem like that much. When put in perspective of what I’d consider driving at home, it’s quite the drive! The leg down is the equivalent of driving from Vancouver to San Francisco. The trip back will be the equivalent of driving between Vancouver and the border of Ontario or Mexico. Yikes!