Portillo sucks

Possibly the strangest lift you'll ever take: the 4-seat high-speed poma

I´m in Portillo, which according to everything I´ve read is the most famous resort in Chile--Lonely Planet lists it as one of their ¨must visit¨ spots--but I have to say I´m underimpressed.

I got here by taking a share-taxi (¨combi¨) from Los Andes to the little town of Rio Blanco, then hitching. I got a ride from Martin, a Santiagan, his sister and her two daughters. I spent the afternoon skiing with Martin.

Does it look cold and windy? Think again: colder and windier.

On my first chair lift ride I looked at the guy next to me and did a double-take. It was Ted, who I met in the hostel in Santiago. I knew he would be at Portillo, but it was really funny running into him on my first run.

Ted enjoys some of the finer views from a Portillo chairlift

The scenery is beautiful and I can imagine if the weather were better it would be great skiing, but the problem is that the weather hasn´t been nice. The weather has been typical, from what everyone tells me, of the Andes: cloudy and windy.

This makes Portillo a fairly lousy resort. The skiing has been very scratchy (icy). That means that we´ve been confined mostly to groomers, of which there are exactly two (that´s right, 2) that are of any length. At least at other resorts there are multiple groomed runs to cruise around on when there isn´t good snow.

That having been said, it´s still been fun skiing here. Later in the day it´s been a bit warmer, which makes the one run that goes down to the snowline a bit warmer and carvy.

I spent almost the entire day (10-5) yesterday doing a long traverse from the top of the lift, walking across the highway, and traversing some abandoned railroad tracks behind the Chilean army depot (the border is about 1/2 mile away) to get fresh tracks on the nicest snow I´ve found--nice corn snow at about 30-35 degrees for about 500 vertical feet. I got the traverse and hike wired to the point where I could do a run every 20 to 25 minutes.

Jennifer from Juneau schralps the sweet spring slushies

Other aspects of Portillo are great. I´m staying in the Inca Lodge, which has about as much room as a passenger plane. There are four beds, a narrow hallway, and a closet. But I can´t complain: The price for skiing, sleeping, eating four meals per day, and using the hot tub and everything else in the hotel is one inclusive price of $70 per day.

Luxurious Inca Lodge accomodations

There is also a cool social scene around the hotel, unfortunately there are enough of each language group that there is less intermixing, though I have been practicing my Spanish whenever possible. I've been eating in the diner mostly with a group of Americans from Syracuse and a couple of women from Japan.

Yumi carves the last bits of the Lake Run

Portillo attracts mega ski-bums. A few people I´ve met are approaching 200 days of skiing every year, and I took a run yesterday with a woman who is traveling with Rainer Hertrich, who has skiied more than 1,000 days consecutively--and he´s still going. We saw Rainer from the lift, cruising along with parallel turns on his telemark skis.

Brian and Alan at feeding time in the scum-class lounge, Portillo

I might go for a ¨beauty tour¨ today, which is what my friend Jon calls it when you go skiing on something flat because the backcountry is worthless. There is a beautiful, though frozen, lake at the resort and I´m talking with Matt, a snowboarder from Yukon Territory, about skiing to the end of it and on up the valley. There won´t be much skiing but the views should be interesting.

The S-curves below Portillo at night, trucker's delight