Valle Nevado 1

Chris called at 8 and we agreed to meet for 8:30. The breakfast buffet was quite good. Next to the two orange juice dispensers was something I had never seen before, raspberry juice. Not some Tang-like mix, but with seeds and pulp, whole puréed raspberries.

We agreed to meet 30 minutes later to begin exploring these mountains. I can't really put in to words the sheer scale of this place. It's hard to draw a comparison to Whistler-Blackcomb or any of the other resorts I've so far been to because the lack of trees gives, perhaps an illusion, of vastly more terrain. I'm not sure if the photo's I've been taking here and at Las Leñas will be able to give the expanse justice.

We spent the first part of the morning doing some cruiser runs; Chris has been riding for about a decade and Summer is doing very well having only started riding last year. While she rode the groomed runs Chris and I would try to locate pockets of powder.

Summer suggested we break for lunch before noon and beat the late Chilean crush at 1pm. A very good idea it turned out to be. She and I had an incredible ceviche while Chris tried the medium rare chicken, sausage, and beef brochette. Arguing members of a nearby New Jersey ski club provided a bit of entertainment while we ate.

At some of the quad chairs at Valle Nevado is a loading system I've never seen before. It combines a very short lift carpet in the chair loading area, moving slower than the chair. It removes the risk of slipping due to very icy or channeled loading areas. While they have a number of chairs, two major areas are only accessible by 1km+ long Poma lifts, one rising through 400m of veritical height. In preparation for taking these, we tried to get Summer to successfully load one. She missed the first two attempts, but did get nearly 3/4 of the way to the top of a short lift before catching an edge and falling in to some powder on the edges of the lift track. At this point Chris and I parted ways, agreeing to meet for aprés at 4:30.

I went off to try a couple more runs in what remained of some slightly tracked powder. I revisited the area we saw earlier and made a few runs through there. My last run brought me back to the hotel complex around 4:30. While walking by the hot pool, found Chris & Summer and the members of the Jersey ski club.

They joined me moments later and over hot chocolate and snacks we commented on how people here just don't get lift line etiquette. I alluded to this in the Las Lenas 2 entry but it truly is endemic here. The situation is so bad that at one chair a lift operator acts as traffic cop literally directing when one line can go and the other must wait. Even then they're not always successful. We coined the term queue rage to describe the frustration that we're starting to experience.

Despite all of this I can confidently say I will be back here again. What has truly surprised me is the number of North Americans present. Though I suppose with the prices one must pay at Valle Nevado, it certainly puts it out of reach of many Chileans. Next time I might splurge and get the helicopter transfer rather than deal with the drive up. However, the driver I had said there are plans to undertake some major upgrades to the road to remove a number of the switchbacks.