South America Info

[JohnGD33]

I am planning a trip to Valle Nevado, any input would be great. My lady and I are planning our hunneymoon. I was going to go to portillo but the rates are a little lower at Valle Nevado.

 

[Ski Portillo]

I am planning a trip to Valle Nevado, any input would be great. My lady and I are planning our hunneymoon. I was going to go to portillo but the rates are a little lower at Valle Nevado.

Hello,

The rates at Portillo include all of your meals and lift tickets, so the comparison between the rates at the 2 resorts may be a bit deceiving. If you would like some more info, you may send a private message and we will be happy to provide.

Thanks!
Portillo Team

 

[danpop]

I am planning a trip to Valle Nevado, any input would be great. My lady and I are planning our hunneymoon. I was going to go to portillo but the rates are a little lower at Valle Nevado.

We just came from Chile a week and a half ago (honeymoon too!); had an excellent time. We skied Nevado and Portillo.

For a honeymoon I would recommend to combine few (non-skiing) activities together with skiing. The ski resorts in Chile tend to be remote/isolated with little to do besides skiing. So what we did was to combine 5 days of skiing with some Spa time, wine tasting and spend some time in Santiago.

Skiing was fantastic. Snow quality was amazing; it was not crowded at all; lots of things to remember like the longest POMA lift ever (the Tres Puntas lift at Nevado) or the high speed POMA lifts at Portillo (my wife thought that riding those things felt much like water skiing!), etc.

Here are some pictures at Nevado and Portillo, just couple of weeks ago…. (I wish I was still there).

(BTW, We had our honeymoon organized by santiagoadventures.com; I highly recommend them).

 

[Geoff]

Hello,

The rates at Portillo include all of your meals and lift tickets, so the comparison between the rates at the 2 resorts may be a bit deceiving. If you would like some more info, you may send a private message and we will be happy to provide.

Thanks!
Portillo Team

Valle Nevado also includes breakfast, dinner, and lift ticket. They used to give you coupons you could use for lunch but I think they stopped doing that. The combination of Valle Nevado, La Parva, and el Colorado is probably 10x the acres of Portillo. It's also much closer to Santiago and the airport so you can be skiing by 11:00 your first day and ski until mid-afternoon on your last day. That's really not possible at Portillo. The terrain at Valle Nevado is very intermediate. The challenging stuff is up the T-bar up the back side of el Colorado and out of bounds down to the Valle Nevado access road. There's a little bit of pitch off the Tres Puntas surface lift at the very top of the resort but it's not sustained for very long. The T-bar up the back of el Colorado has a nice bump run. La Parva has a little bit of interesting terrain off the quad chair farthest from Valle Nevado but it's not exactly loaded with advanced terrain, either. Portillo has a few slices of steeps but they don't last long. When the snow isn't good, it skis very small. It also has the downside that they require 1 week stays unless they have space at the last minute and relax their reservations polidy. It's good but I don't think I'd want to spend a week there.

I'm writing this from Termas de Chillan (now renamed Nevados de Chillan) where I'm sitting in the lobby of the Gran Hotel waiting for my van to the train station in Chillan. I think Chillan has the best terrain in Chile and it's basically lift-serviced backcountry with almost no skier traffic. The problem with Chilan is that it's a pain in the neck to get here. After you land in Santiago, you have to get yourself downtown to the central train station and take a 4 1/2 hour train to Chillan. It's then another 90 minutes to the resort. The lift infrastructure is primitive. They have the longest chairlift in Chile... the Don Otto. It's a really slow diesel powered double chair. In higher winds, you have to ride surface lifts above mid-mountain to get to the goods. I got unlucky this trip and spent way too much time on platter lifts and T-bars and not enough time on the Don Otto.

The gods didn't line up this trip but the other killer option around Santiago is snowcat skiing at Ski Arpa.

If you want true expert terrain, it ain't in Chile. Go to Las Lenas in Argentina.

Some Valle Nevado beta:
Prices drop after Labor Day. You may run into spring conditions but it's a very good value. The resort has three hotels at different price points. I've always stayed at the middle grade Puerta del Sol which is the largest hotel of the three with a mountain-view room and a balcony. The rooms are OK but nothing special. The beds are twin mattresses on plywood. The complex has a half-dozen restaurants... French, Chilean, Swiss, Italian, and American. They also have an a la carte Sushi bar. If you stay at the middle grade hotel, you can eat at any of the restaurants and the only extra fees are your bar tab and lunch. If you stay at the cheapest hotel, I think they require you to eat at the restaurant in that hotel. Valle Nevado has the only high speed quad in Chile. The signature terrain is an intermediate bowl called Olympico that goes around the other side of the ridge line from the high speed quad and dumps you out all the way at the bottom of the resort where it's 3 lifts to get back to the top. Along the way down, you go past the T-bar that goes up the back side of el Colorado. There are 3 surface lifts above the high speed quad and you can traverse past the entrance to Olympico to get to La Parva. At the Valle Nevado ticket window, you can upgrade your ticket to add a day ticket to La Parva. I always did that on most sunny days. There's a good Swiss place at the bottom of La Parva that makes for a good lunch spot with cheese fondue and beers.

The transportation between the airport and the ski resort is one of the world's great ripoffs. You can book it through SkiTotal.cl or directly with the resort. Either way, it's very expensive unless you're with a larger group since they charge the same regardless of how many people in the group and you end up sharing the van if you're only one or two people. You can get there much cheaper from downtown Santiago. You can also day trip up from Santiago but you'll often run into road closures whenever it snows. Their access road is the worst I've ever seen in the world and I've skied New Zealand and a bunch of places in the alps. You climb 10,000 vertical feet with something like 60 switchback turns along the way. On weekends, it's 1-way uphill until 2pm and then 1-way downhill until 6pm. Chains are required. There's a small hotel in Farralonnes that's cheaper. I've never stayed there but they'll apparently shuttle you to La Parva or el Colorado every day for free and you can ski back to the hotel if the snow is good.

 

[Geoff]

An update since I skied Valle Nevado and La Parva on Saturday as a day trip from Santiago after I returned from a week of skiing at Nevados de Chillan. It was a bluebird sunny day but the off piste snow was pretty crisp other than at the highest elevations out of the sun.

Day trip transporation from the hotels up to Valle Nevado is 18,000 pesos. At today's ~512 pesos to the dollar, that's around $35.00 for the ride. The hotels in Santiago sell Valle Nevado day tickets at a 20% discount.

This is looking down at the Valle Nevado hotel complex. The tall building with the triangular roof is the middle grade Puerta del Sol. It very much looks like a French-style ski resort.

This is the lower somewhat steeper section under the high speed quad. I'm showing the only part with any pitch to it.

This is the top of the high speed quad. You have some turns of pretty good pitch. Most of the traffic takes the groomed way down. Directly under the chair is slightly steeper than skier's right of the lift.

This is taken from the top of the high speed quad looking at the Tres Puntas surface lift. This is the other part of the resort that has some pitch to it. You can also traverse some to get completely ignored untracked powder on powder days. I've also skied there after huge dumps when you could find nice untracked powder to skier's left of the platter lift liftline. In this shot, it's bare rock and that part of the hill is prone to wind scouring and bakes in the sun.

At the lower part of this picture is the bottom of the high speed quad and the mid-mountain day lodge at Valle Nevado. You're looking at the T-bar that runs up the back side of el Colorado. In past visits, skier's left of the T-bar liftline was always bumped up with a competition mogul course. The interesting out of bounds is to skier's right of the T-bar running down to the Valle Nevado access road. You can see pieces of the cornice that runs the length of the ridge line. The top of that face is very steep and very slide-prone. I've seen the Valle Nevado helecopter dropping bombs on that cornice after big dumps and the resulting slide washes over the access road a couple of miles down from the hotel. I've hired a driver and given him a family radio to come get us down there. You can hitch hike but there are often dozens of people thumbing and very few people stopping. You could spend weeks exploring all the chutes that drop down from el Colorado down to the Valle Nevado road.

Off the back side of Valle Nevado, you get to La Parva. There's a little bit of interesting terrain off an upper mountain triple chair closest to Valle Nevado but the best terrain is off the fixed-grip quad on the far side of the resort.

These two shots are taken from the La Parva quad chair roughly 2/3 of the way up. You can traverse to the back side of this cliff band and get to more terrain. When you're skiing La Parva, you end up spending most of your time on this lift. When I stay at Valle Nevado, I usually buy a La Parva lift ticket on all the sunny days. It's not all that expensive to get the 2nd ticket and it saves you the hassle of getting asked for a ticket on the La Parva quad and having to ski to the bottom to get a day ticket.

 

[Talisman]

So Geoff, why Valle Nevado, Chile and not Las Lenas for your ski week?

 

[Geoff]

So Geoff, why Valle Nevado, Chile and not Las Lenas for your ski week?

I only did Valle Nevado as a day trip from Santiago after a week at Nevados de Chillan.

A few reasons I haven't been going to Las Lenas...

Las Lenas is painful access. You fly into Buenos Aires and that's 1200 km from the Andes. There are no airports near Las Lenas so your options are to transfer across the city to the domestic airport, fly to within 2 hours of Las Lenas, and take a bus the rest of the way... or take a forever overnight bus to Las Lenas from Buenos Aires. After an overnight in an airplane from the US, another overnight in a bus is too much travel hassle for me. You're basically killing two travel days in each direction.

I'm told that Las Lenas is awful if the Marte lift isn't running and you can go your whole trip being shut out of it either for weather or poor snow conditions.

I really don't have the skills or physical capability to ski big mountain double blacks. I donated both ACLs to the sport decades ago. I don't seek out terrain much steeper than around 35 degrees and no-fall terrain is out of my comfort zone. Out of bounds, my snow safety skills are weak enough that I try to keep it under 30 degrees to minimize the slide risk unless I'm with much more experienced people. I'd probably be uncomfortable on Marte and bored with the rest of Las Lenas.

I have Santiago and the ski resorts in Chile pretty well figured out. It's easy. I know people who tend to go there the same time I do.

 

[deadheadskier]

Hello,

The rates at Portillo include all of your meals and lift tickets, so the comparison between the rates at the 2 resorts may be a bit deceiving. If you would like some more info, you may send a private message and we will be happy to provide.

Thanks!
Portillo Team

Chilean Big Brother :lol:

Ski area marketers from half way around the world monitoring Alpinezone for potential customers :lol:

 

[Talisman]

I have Santiago and the ski resorts in Chile pretty well figured out. It's easy. I know people who tend to go there the same time I do.

Thanks for sharing your experience with skiing in the Andes. If I get the chance to ski the Andes, I'll be prepared to understand the options better.

 

[hardline]

Chilean Big Brother :lol:

Ski area marketers from half way around the world monitoring Alpinezone for potential customers :lol:

AZ is becoming a force to be reaconed with.

 

[JohnGD33]

Thanks for all the great info. The photos are awesome. I just reserved my room at portillo for july 4th. I am planning to do some beach time also at Vina Del MAr but looking for some more info. Flights are still a bit high but I hope they will go down. We will see

 

[Geoff]

Thanks for all the great info. The photos are awesome. I just reserved my room at portillo for july 4th. I am planning to do some beach time also at Vina Del MAr but looking for some more info. Flights are still a bit high but I hope they will go down. We will see

I recommend waiting until August for your trip. July is the local holiday season so it's more crowded and more expensive. August typically has better base depths.