Las Lenas was the last stop in our month-long road trip adventure where we skied five resorts in Chile and Argentina traveling via our rental Kia "Mystery Bus".
If Valle Nevado was groomer paradise, then Las Lenas was a paradise of couloirs. And the secret is out. It's why Americans fly down to this resort in the Andes. And it's why there's a run named "Los Gringos."
The Santa Rosa storm never hit the Andes this September, but spending a week in Argentina skiing pockets of powder left from the last storm wasn't too tough. We skied the major backcountry peaks like Ponce, Rios, Torrecillas and Martin. On those days we had to flash our green wristbands to ski patrol, which signified that we understood that a rescue would cost U.S. $1,000. Some days we hiked for four hours trying to find the powder, other times, as Jes McMillan called it, we "be-bopped" around the inbounds, bumping it up on the moguls or doing laps on Marte. As the week wore on, warm conditions caused the snow to deteriorate quickly and Lenas became much ado about the apres-ski and Lynsey Dyer's Betty Crocker conconctions.
Lenas has closed for the winter, but luckily we have the Tetons. Until next summer in South America, the Jackson crew is signing out… -Vanessa Pierce
All photos by Gary Winberg
How do you thank a band for rocking the house all night? Why you sneak back into their dressing room and drink their contract rider, of course.
Ok, maybe not. But with the night not nearly over, I realized this is exactly what we had done. Vancouver hip-hop band Sweatshop Union was still jammin’ on the balcony of Seattle’s Evo ski shop, I ducked back stage (which does day-time duty as my friends Ian and Ryan’s office) to find gin gone, the tonic waning, and the multiple cases of green bottled beer requested by the band empty. Good time to duck back into the party.
This was Friday night, and the occasion was the showing of MSP’s Push in possibly the most ski-centric metropolis in the U.S. About 1,000 people assembled in front of the Freemont Studios massive HD screen. (CLICK HERE FOR A REVIEW OF PUSH ) After the show, the over-21 crowd made the short stumble back to the Evo headquarters (evogear.com), where the merchandise had been stowed in a container parked out back, and Sweatshop Union had set up shot on the upper balcony.
Few cities get stoked for the ski season like Seattle. The show was packed with all kinds—from local college kids to film stars (such as Seattle-bred Ingrid Backstrom) to heavy hitters from Washington-based companies such as K2, Helly Hansen and POW gloves. But while this was the highlight of the week for the ski crowd, for the folks at Evo, it was just another night in the retail/party business. The shop hosted a wakeboard premiere on Thursday and a showing of the snowboard flick on Saturday. -Derek Taylor
All photos by Gabe Rogel.
This region is explosively entertaining. In one day at Termas de Chillan, Lynsey Dyer and Jess McMillan launched front flips off a cornice, photographer Gabe Rogel shot the best backcountry skiing of his life and we almost blew up our rental house...CLICK HERE FOR THE REST OF THE STORY.
