Portillo, August 5-12/06

[salida]

I was going to do the whole right up, but basically the jist is the skiing was awesome, 10-20ft base, with 4ft while we were t here. Ran into some awesome folks, and skied and partied hard!

Here are the select (semiselect) good pics. Some more action and video on the way.

waiting at the airport

sunrise over the andes

no turtles, apples, or cheese into chile please

big rock on the drive up

a mile long tunnel with no ventilation, hold your breath

switch backs, a two lane road, crazy drivers turn into a 3 laner

traffic jam

small room in the Inca

free wine tasting, night 1/7

phil on the lift

 

[salida]

flat light first day, looking over the partially frozen lake

stephan and myself

me below some cliffs

wine tasting 2/7

base on a sunny day

plateau lift

looking towards roca jack

out of bounds beyond condor

poma

me on the lift

 

[salida]

waiting at roca jack

my friends decided i looked like hitch hiker, the portillo dog

watch the sequence

jason got knocked over by avy bombing

nice rock

waist deep

our tracks down the main chute plateau side

rock again, hold the distance mark

 

[salida]

stephan and phil ripping

keith on the bottom, stephan phil jason and justin at the top

keith infront of Roca jack where we got first tracks in waist deep. The hardest part was riding the 5 man poma up the slope, jeeeez

looking at a mandatory from the bottom of the first chute on the roca traverse, it was more like 15ft at the beginning of the week, 5ft at the end

looking down from the mandatory

waist deep

air

keith on the lift

 

[salida]

wine tasting 7/7, hum missed pictures on 3, 4, 5, and 6.....

playing "make love to the dealer" in the tea room with pisco

group shot

big snow banks

girl on the bar

la Posada

-Porter

 

[Marc]

I appreciate the pictures.

But still hate you.

 

[SkiDog]

I avoided lookin at this thread and now I know why....

Im going to cry now...

So unfair...Im SUPER JEALOUS...looks like a great time man...that has been on my list for a couple years now...VERY SOON....

Great pics...

M

 

[BeanoNYC]

Sweet pics! Thanks!

 

[FRITOLAYGUY]

Great pics, that looks like a fun time you had..

 

[riverc0il]

niiice. how much lift vs. hike to skiing did you guys do? you satisfied with the DIN on those freerides? i know that was a concern of yours before heading down there. you got august dude, sweet. you are just missing september now, right? way to do it up right.

 

[highpeaksdrifter]

All your pixs are great. I liked this one the best. Thanks for taking the time to post them.

 

[salida]

niiice. how much lift vs. hike to skiing did you guys do? you satisfied with the DIN on those freerides? i know that was a concern of yours before heading down there. you got august dude, sweet. you are just missing september now, right? way to do it up right.

Thanks steve. We did a lot of lift, mostly lift, however we also did a lot of traversing to get to untracked. We'd traverse a few gullies over off roca jack and hit up a new chute when one got tracked out... Either way we found new snow almost every run. Some folks were hiking the snowfields above roca jack (the way to the Super-C Coulior, however no one skied it while we were there, avy danger was to high). We didn't stray to far out of bounds because of the high avy danger...

The Freerides worked awesome. I'm pretty big around 200 and I had them on 10.5 and they kicked ass. I only came out all week when I hit a 15 footer and was to far on the front, and still only one ski released (skied out on one ski babyy).

September, we shall see, the rockpile will be my only choice, I dont have the funds or the time to hope an airplane again!

 

[salida]

HPD, I'll one up you!

 

[koreshot]

Man it makes me angry to see these pictures. Having spent 8 weeks in Portillo in 4 consecutive years, I only got conditions like that for 2 days!!! You lucky dog. Though I did have 2 years with the lake completely frozen over, which opened up a bunch of easy access BC terrain. Looks like you guys had a great time. Did you guys try Gargantita? (the chute right under the Plateau lift) - it would have been really sweet in waist deep snow.

 

[salida]

Yeah we skied Gargantita it was sweet, caused some major slough in there, covered the back of my head... awesome. We skied all those chutes on the plateau, a few had some mandatories in them, 10-15ft. We also skied chutes OB on the skiers right of Garganta (sp), one was about 5 ft wide, the other had a gnarly mandatory in it...

 

[koreshot]

Yeah we skied Gargantita it was sweet, caused some major slough in there, covered the back of my head... awesome. We skied all those chutes on the plateau, a few had some mandatories in them, 10-15ft. We also skied chutes OB on the skiers right of Garganta (sp), one was about 5 ft wide, the other had a gnarly mandatory in it...

The big Gargantita chute on lookers right under the lift looks sweet but I haven't skied it because of the 20 foot mandatory right into the lower Garnganta bump field. The one lookers left I have done a couple of times since that was a small 5 foot mandatory. I am so jealous!!! How was the left Gargantita chute looking this year? When I skied it it was not all that well filled in and actually choked down to about 6 feet wide halfway through before opening up again just before the mini mandatory.

I haven't tried any of the OB chutes on skiers right of Garganta - I thought about it the last year I was there, but had fear of getting lost and killing myself

nice trip report.

 

[salida]

The big Gargantita chute on lookers right under the lift looks sweet but I haven't skied it because of the 20 foot mandatory right into the lower Garnganta bump field.

It was real good, it was more like 10-15 ft with a nice soft landing when we were there. (have it on video in a few weeks...)

The one lookers left I have done a couple of times since that was a small 5 foot mandatory. I am so jealous!!! How was the left Gargantita chute looking this year? When I skied it it was not all that well filled in and actually choked down to about 6 feet wide halfway through before opening up again just before the mini mandatory.

Yeah this one did not have a mandatory in it... just pretty narrow, maybe 8 ft.

I haven't tried any of the OB chutes on skiers right of Garganta - I thought about it the last year I was there, but had fear of getting lost and killing myself

These ones were way gnarlier than the ones lookers right of Garganta. Only one was not a mandatory, and it was a 100 ft vertical at 6 ft wide, to 2 sharp turns and then out... real steep too. The others have mandatories in them, that if you don't stick are going to lead to falls over rocks and maybe to the lake....

 

[NHpowderhound]

Oh my freakin God!!!! WTF am I doing here in NH? Looks like a trip of a lifetime!
What kind of wines did you like? I'm a bit of a wine lover myself, although I usually taste more Rolling Rock. My GF works for the airkines and I've been enjoying lots of French wines brought back from Paris.
Thanks for shareing Porter!
((*
*))NHPH

 

[salida]

Oh my freakin God!!!! WTF am I doing here in NH? Looks like a trip of a lifetime!
What kind of wines did you like? I'm a bit of a wine lover myself, although I usually taste more Rolling Rock. My GF works for the airkines and I've been enjoying lots of French wines brought back from Paris.
Thanks for shareing Porter!
((*
*))NHPH

We had reds and whites... I was not much of a conniseur (more of a beer dude). However, we had some nice pinot noir, camernere (sp), cab, and best was a Casa La Joya Malbec... Pretty delish, and it was free!

 

[kcyanks1]

Nice post! I have to try to post some of the pictures I have, but I didn't do as good a job as you. First time I ever skied with a camera, actually, and I didn't use it enough. The day after the first storm was amazing. Responding to the posts, I did one of the Gargantita chutes..the one that was slightly lower elevation, to skier's right going down. It it coverage all the way and was lots of fun, probably comparable to some chutes at Jackson Hole like Tower 3 or Alta chutes. I didn't do the other one to skier's right/slightly higher elevation because while it looked good almost all the way down, the last bit had some rocks. I guess you could just jump it slightly and avoid it, but that's the point where I start getting nervous, even though there probably wasn't much reason. The terrain off of Roca Jack, described well by Porter/Salda, was amazing. Unfortunately it was basically closed the last couple days, but before that it was fun. It seems from his posts that I'm not as good nor as gutsy as Salida, so I didn't do the mandatory cliff chute, but I skied a handful of runs on some other terrain up there, and it was good. The best one was a wide-by-eastern-standards chute/trail through some rocks off of Roca Jack just passed the first big snow field and before the second snow field. The snow was good in there even before the storm.

To summarize the trip quickly, the skiing Sat afternoon through Tues. was fun, but conditions were not anything fantastic, except for some stuff off Roca Jack, especially the one route I described. Then it snowed a ton, and Wednesday was incredible, as some of Porter's pics show. The morning had only a couple lifts open, but they opened more throughout the day. I figured the fact that Roca Jack didn't open until late afternoon would mean 2 more incredible days, but it snowed a lot more ... and then there was a ton of wind, and they just couldn't keep the lifts open. So it was ironic how more snow in a way hurt things, but it was still fun nonetheless of course. It was just really cool skiing in August

Amusingly, despite spending a week in the same lodging and eating in the same cafeteria as Porter, we didn't actually formally meet until the airport in Santiago on the way out.. I ran into some of the people I knew he was skiing with on the mountain, but they weren't with him at the time..