September 6, 2010

Nevados De Chillán

After hearing rumours of snow falling south of Santiago the gringos decided it would be rude not to go and get a taste of some of Chiles finest white powder. We rented a van with one head light, no rego and flat tyres, jammed it full of smelly snowboard bags and even smellier humans and hit the highway.

The Resort was Nevados De Chillán, formally known as Termas De Chillán located roughly 6 hours out of Santiago. The ski resort is located 1,650 meters above sea level and has 11 lifts serving 28 marked trails, and a total of 35 km runs over 10,000 hectares of terrain. In the center is South America's longest ski run, Las Tres Marias, which has a total length of 13 km. Termas de Chillán is also known for its hot springs, with average temperatures of 60 C. The waters of these spas are sulfaltadas and contain iron, sulfur, manganese, magnesium and potassium, among other minerals. In addition are middle mineralization.

There is a bunch of on-hill ski in ski out style accommodation at the base of the lifts or you can save a few pesos and stay down the road about 20 minutes. Pretty impressive resort with tons of easily accessible lines, cliffs, shoots etc. and is host of a fairly potent sulfa smell.

T Rice was there with his entourage of about a bazillion filming for his new tv show. Looked like they had filmers filming filmers, helis shooting the filmers who are filming the other filmers. Those boys have been doing some mind blowing things.

navardosdechillan
Image:: Will Jack

chairlift
Image:: Will Jack

fromchair
Image:: Will Jack

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