Quick Chile Ski
September 2022

I couldn’t pass up the opportunity.

Following a weeklong shoot for Columbia at the base of Valle Nevado ski resort, not far from where Robin and I lived under a rock in 2009, I found myself in Chile, in spring. When the rest of the crew returned to the airport for their flights home, I left them at check-in, grabbed a rental car, and headed back into the mountains.

Well of course it’s Chile, so nothing is that easy for me. But after a less-than-desirable experience renting a car and getting to the mountains—including arriving at the mountain village only to find everything closed, no food was available, and the last gas station and grocery store were an hour and a half behind me—I finally lined up my opportunity to ski in a zone I’d heard about for a decade, but never visited.

After three, four, maybe five? ski trips to South America over the years, Cajon de Maipo had still evaded me. In truth, I’d never even tried to visit. Only two hours by car from the giant city of Santiago (which I swear has some of the best mountain access of any major city in the world, on par with Almaty, Tehran, Salt Lake City) rise 17000+ foot peaks.

A few extremely prominent 4000+ foot couloirs are visible from the old mining road that my little rental car struggled up. (AWD, as emblazoned on the small SUV’s hatch, isn’t as much a fact as it is a concept). The way my weird schedule and wavering motivation ended up working out, I kind of had one day to give these couloirs a solid attempt. After a comfortable night sleeping diagonally in the back of the car, I was up and skinning in a soup of warm snow, clouds, wind, and the occasional sideways snowfall. Suffice it to say, I didn’t succeed in climbing and skiing the couloirs. I’m happy to have gotten into these big mountains, on a whim, in late September; to have navigated the maze of mining roads and ruins; and for being able to tack a little fun onto an otherwise work trip.

After a many-years hiatus from Chile, it would have been harder to leave if I hadn’t known that I was retuning just a couple short months later.

I just love that country and the experiences it offers me.