​After the Superhighway’s bid for freedom on the high seas, we needed a down day in a major way.  Our friend Raul had told us about a lake that was several miles up a river that emptied into the sea not far from our anchorage in Bahia Tic Toc.  Clint and Reina were also keen on a little exploratory mission and the weather was slated to be sunny – a nice change from the torrential rain and high winds we’d been getting beaten up by for the past few days.  

​We had the poor fortune of arriving to the river’s mouth at low tide and after transiting the bar with breaking waves on either side, we found that progress up the river was pretty slow.  We inched our way up for an hour or two until we came upon a glorious looking black sand beach, clearly eroded from all of the volcanic rock in the mountains above us.  

​Our thirst and hunger were both strong and our wills were weak and when the sun started splitting through the clouds we had no choice but to stop.  Beers were cracked, fires were built, and the party commenced on the spot.  80s rock could be heard echoing through the jungle and across the glacially fed river as it swirled past our beach of choice.  

​Clint and Reina were planning to head down to San Rafael as well, so we started planning out where our next few anchorages would be and what we’d do once we got to the glacier.  We cracked into a few ciders and hung around the fire, watching steam rise off the beach as the sun worked its magic.

​It was exactly the warm, relaxing day we needed and we decided to slow-boat our way back down river with a couple of bottles of wine and some classic oldies ringing out across the water.

​After a quick afternoon nap, the girls went out kayaking and Clint and I hung around on the front deck of Karma, watching dolphins frolic around the boats and waiting for the sunset to come.  

​A tasty crab appetizer and a big dinner of chipotle cream mussels followed and we all went to bed early with full bellies.  

​We turned out early the next morning and were greeted by the perfect quartering breeze just after we left the anchorage.  The Rascal sails really fast on a broad reach, but Karma caught up with us after a couple hours of sailing and we were close enough that we could take a few pictures of each other as they passed.  

​The wind rose and fell a lot throughout the day and we did a lot of reefing and unreefing, but generally made good time and pulled into a delightful little anchorage by the name of Pozo de Oro that evening.  It was a little sheltered lagoon with a bottom of golden sand and stones.

​The next day of sailing wasn’t the fastest, with a fluky headwind and thick clouds, but we had several dolphin escorts, sailed past a few interesting fishing villages in the islands, and sailed close to a couple of sea lion colonies.  In fact, one little sea lion pup followed us for more than a half an hour, splishing & splashing and peeking up at us from the water.  

​On the final approach to our anchorage, the breeze that had been light all day shifted around a bit and we finally were able to scoot along at 5 kts under sail alone.  It had all the makings of a superb sunset and all the worries of the day melted away.  There were a few dark clouds to our south, but nothing that looked particularly troublesome, and we figured we would make it to our anchorage about an hour before dark.  

All of a sudden our light breeze from the side suddenly turned into torrential rains and violent gusty wind from dead ahead.  It climbed from 10 knots to 25-30kts in less than five minutes and the Rascal had her rail under water despite a double-reefed main and the little jiblet up front.  We cranked up the motor and tacked back and forth into it with the sea rising, the clouds darkening, and our on-time arrival looking dubious.  A particularly big wave swamped us at one point, stole our crab trap from on deck, deposited a couple hundred liters into the cockpit, and receded back into the ocean with a rude splash.  
​
The entrance into the anchorage looked exceptionally sketchy, with no soundings and a few sizable rocks, but we had little choice and we plowed ahead with Jess on the bow scanning for rocks in the gather darkness and me watching the depth sounder from the helm.  We made it through a little pass just as the wind began to die off and finally got the hook down about an hour after sunset.  It was a stressful evening, but luckily the Rascal pulled through nicely and we made a big mussel dinner (garlic butter wine sauce? Why not?) to recharge our batteries before bed.  

The next day had more south winds predicted, so we decided to take advantage of the sunshine to dry out the boat and do some exploring.  A beautiful sunrise greeted us in stark contrast to the previous night's foul weather.

​The anchorage was a cool little nook with lots of islets around and we went out in the dinghy to see what we could find.  

​Unfortunately lots of parts of Chile, despite their remoteness, have bit of floating garbage from salmon farmers and litterbugs piled up on shores and this otherwise pristine little nook was no exception.  We decided to collect some to build into a new crab trap for ourselves.  

​The views were still exceptional and we spent a good bit of time traipsing through the woods to find a little lake that showed up on the chart.  

​Not a bad spot for a nap, I reckon.  

​We spent the rest of our afternoon drying things out, editing photos on our laptops, and drinking gin and tonics.  All of a sudden, to our surprise, we saw Karma steaming into the anchorage!  After leaving them at Pozo de Oro, we hadn’t been expecting to see them until San Rafael.  It was great to catch up with them again and we spent the evening eating steaks, a rich mussel stew and dispatching the last of our gin supply.  

​We again split off from Karma again the next day and we made good distance, broad reaching and sailing straight down wind.  The big channels start to choke down into smaller tighter fjords at this point and the wind is pretty much always either coming from dead behind or dead ahead because of the funneling affect the cliff walls have.

The views were quite spectacular and we spent plenty of time slowly sailing along, dancing to funk music, playing cribbage, and drinking plenty of Chilean wine.   

​As we continued further south, we saw fewer fishing boats and the anchorages showed less signs of human activity.  We spent one afternoon constructing our new “recycled” crab trap out of the beach garbage while a light following breeze slowly pushed us further south.  

​We looked up part-way through the traps construction to find a big motor catamaran bearing down on us, the first big ship we’d seen in days.  They were clearly a sight-seeing mission headed down to San Rafael and they swept pretty close to us as we went by, breaking up the peace of the afternoon and rocking us with their wake. 

​The day wore on, and a little while before sunset, we saw them returning in the other direction.  In good spirits, and with a few glasses of wine in us, we decided mooning them would be a pretty damn good idea.  They were several hundred yards away, but someone must’ve had their binoculars out as they were passing because we could just make out the sound of a wolf whistle above the drone of their engines.  We waved in reply and we each continued on our way.  

We spent that evening finishing up the crab trap on the beach, eager to resume our nightly fresh-seafood appetizers.  

That night was nice and clear and we decided to head to the beach to take some long-exposures of the beautiful night sky.  There was no light pollution for hundreds of miles and the moon had yet to rise, so the Milky Way was crystal clear.

​Just before bed we christened our new crab trap “Carmen” with a bottle of pisco, baited it with some old steak grizzle, and dropped her over the side to try our luck.  We’d gotten a good weather report (strong north winds slowly tapering off) from Porter that afternoon and decided that we’d try our luck at entering Laguna San Rafael the following day.  There were south winds predicted for the following few days, so we knew if we didn’t make it, we’d be stuck just short waiting for a new weather window.  

​The San Rafael Glacier spills into a big circular body of water that looks like a lake, but is actually still affected by tides.  Its attached to Estero Elephantes (named for the sea elephants that used to frequent the area before they were all hunted to extinction) by a long narrow channel called Rio Tempanos, which is guarded by two very shallow narrow passes.  Because of the huge tidal swings and all of the melt water coming out of San Rafael, strong currents of up to 6 knots sweep through each of these passes daily and its very important to time your passages carefully.
 
We couldn’t transit the passes until about mid day according to our tide tables, so we had a fairly leisurely morning and eventually hauled up the crab trap to see what had happened by in the night.  It had twisted itself around the anchor chain, so it took a while, but when I finally got it up on deck, I couldn’t believe my eyes.  It was, by far, the biggest jaiba I’d ever seen and its claws were big enough to dismember me if I wasn’t careful!  We decided to name him Goliath.

​It was an auspicious start to a pretty goddamn righteous day and we pulled anchor and navigated back out into the channel.  The tide was still running against us so big waves piled up, and the wind was blowing at least 20 knots with the rain coming in droves.  Jess decided to spend the morning down below and whipped up some savory French toast that was just the thing to warm me up.  We were going a bit too fast for our anticipated bar-crossing, so we decided to drop sail and putter along under bare poles for an hour until the tide changed.  

​There were several shallow banks where the water and waves were piling up and by the time we got to the pass, we were getting lots of waves jumping into the cockpit and the wind was gusting up to 25.  We decided to switch down to the storm jib (a sail I very rarely use) because I didn’t want to be overpowered going into the maelstrom of the currents rushing through the pass.  We managed to sail through the pass at about 5 knots with the storm jib and a double reefed main pulling hard.

​Once we got to the other side of the pass it was like a switch had flipped.  The wind died off, the sun started to break apart, and all the swell that’d been coming down Estero Elephantes shrank down to a light wind chop.  

​We had another hour or two of sailing before transiting the other pass, so I decided to slip down below and mix up a big glorious lunch of American fried rice, complete with sausage, cheese, and even some bbq sauce.  We ate in the cockpit, bathed in sunshine with the clouds slowly peeling back to reveal some monstrous snow capped peaks behind them.  

​With the improving weather, we were less concerned about the second pass, but once we got into it we found a counter current of a couple of knots flowing out of the river.  This didn’t jive with the tide info we had, but we fired up the engine and powered through up into the river.  We were still making plenty of headway despite the failing wind and we had plenty of daylight left, so we just kept chugging along.  We’d covered a mile or two, when out on the horizon we noticed a floating white chunk.  I let out a whoop and we both went up on the bow to eyeball it.  It was our first iceberg!

​​We each took dozens of pictures and could hardly contain our excitement for this little white bergy bit.  Little did we know that we were about to see lots of bergs that were a bit bigger than this little Volkswagen-sized toddler.  

​The wind had risen again so we sailed on and slowly we saw more and more bergs as we approached the head of the river.  We had a decent following breeze and were able to sail up the entire thing after getting through the pass, which felt like a pretty good accomplishment given the counter current, the narrowness, and the fact that we were dodging icebergs left and right.  

Eventually we reached the river’s end and popped out into the laguna.  We were both dumbfounded.  There were several bergs around us that were the size of apartment buildings, just floating around placidly.  You could also see the full expanse of the glacier itself off in the distance. 

​Our friend Raul had told us of a good anchorage on the far side of the laguna and we pointed the Rascal towards it.  I was super eager to go and see an iceberg first-hand and I also wanted to get a few photos of the Rascal sailing amid bergs, so I set off in the Superhighway to do some recon while Jess kept the Rascal moving in the right direction.   The sunshine was flirting back and forth with the clouds that were piling up on the mountains and it created the perfect lighting for such a dramatic scene.  

​The intense deep blue color of the ice bergs was absolutely staggering and I moved in towards one in our path that looked like a crouching puma getting ready to lunge.  

​I also managed to collect some ice for cocktails and I got back to the Rascal just as the wind was picking up.  

​It turned into a perfect, clear north wind with no swell and we rocketed across the laguna to our anchorage at 6 knots with the wind whipping through our hair and ice bergs scattered as far as the eye could see.  

It was the perfect way to end such a challenging day of sailing and there was lots of congratulations and reflection once we dropped the anchor.  It felt like we’d “finally made it” – whatever that meant for each of us.  It was an emotional evening and we wasted no time in celebrating.  

​Bulleit poured over ice that was literally thousands of years old.  It tasted awfully sweet.

​The next order of business was dinner – Goliath was on the menu and we could barely fit him into the pan.  Each of his claws on their own would’ve been enough to feed us and he paired perfectly with the ice cold bourbon.  

​Not surprisingly, that put us right to bed and we woke up with a thirst for exploration.  The north wind continued throughout the night and kept all of the icebergs at bay, but it was fairly calm by the time we ventured out.  

​Just after the glacier came into sight, some dolphins appeared out of nowhere and started jumping and frolicking in front of the dinghy.  It was the perfect escort.  

​As we got closer to the glacier there were more and more icebergs.  Some were the size of a football, but others were the size of a 12-story building.  At times, our path would be totally blocked, but we were able to find leads through the ice that brought us up closer and closer to the face of the glacier without having to push much ice out of the way.

I’ve been impressed by how much abuse the Superhighway can take, but I never dreamt that it was capable of pushing big blocks of ice around.  

​We eventually got within a couple hundred yards of the glacier and decided to just stop and enjoy the scene.  The sheer size of it is absolutely incredible and we both sat in awe for a while.  

​All of a sudden, a loud thundering sound echoed across the quiet stillness of the icepack and we looked as a ginormous skyscraper of glacial ice calved off from the face of the glacier.  It slowly tipped away from the face and then, gathering speed, slid down into the sea with a smack and an enormous splash.  

​It’s tough to imagine the exceptional amount of water that gets displaced by such a huge object and the cloud of spray it created was several football fields long.  We were sort of expecting a big tsunami to come and cream us, but all of the surrounding ice damps the wave out and it just turns into a long, slow swell.  As the swell moves through all the dense pack ice, all the bergs bump elbows and make this incredible grinding, rumbling noise.

​We sat there for several hours, moving back and forth with the floating ice and watching as more and more large bergs broke off.  Each time it happened was just as exciting as the first time and we couldn’t help but let out oohs and ahhs each time a chunk would calve off.  It is one of the most incredible displays of the power and strength of nature that I’ve ever seen.  

​There were also lots of different types of calving.  Some bergs would tip off while others would slide in.  Sometimes a big chunk would break off all at once while others would slowly crumble piece by piece.  Some would hit the water like a cannonball while others slid in pretty quietly.  There were even icebergs that broke off from deep underwater and burst up from below!

​The bergs that came from down below (and from the corners where the glacier was getting pinched) were a glorious deep blue color.  Because there was so much pressure on these areas, all of the tiny air bubbles were squeezed out and they were perfectly clear unlike the whitish opaque pieces on top.  

​Eventually the wind started picking up and we decided that we ought to work our way back to the Rascal.  We picked our way along the shoreline and saw that some numbers were written on the rock in white paint.  Each number corresponded to the year when the glacier had been calving off in any given location.  Because of global warming, the face has slowly been receding and by the time we got out to the mark for 1978, we were more than a mile from the face of the glacier.  

​You could also see the areas around the glacier where trees and plants were starting to move into places that’d been under hundreds of feet of ice just a few decades ago.  This painted a very real, tangible picture of climate change and the tremendous rate at which our world is heating up.  

The wind and waves had risen substantially and we had a long, wet ride back to the Rascal that afternoon.  We decided to hunker down, cook a hot meal, and relax for the rest of the day. 
 
The following day, the weather was really horrendous and there was no way we were going anywhere.  We both caught up on our journals, played a lot of cribbage, and did some reading. 
 
When the clouds finally lifted the following day, we could see that the storm had created lots of snow in the high country.

​We knew about a trail that wound up through the woods, so we decided to venture off on a hike.  San Rafael is part of a national park and the trail has several spots that overlook the glacier.  On the way, we passed an old burned-out hotel that was built to stimulate tourism back in the 30s and 40s as well as a decrepit airstrip that is apparently still used at times.  

​It was a warm day, and we spent lots of time at the overlooks watching the glacier calve off and listening to the cracking and splashing of the icebergs.

​We were trying to scope out good zones to try our hand at skiing and we noticed a shoulder on either side of the glacier that seemed to have a good smooth surface without any big crevasses.  Most importantly, they’d be accessible by dinghy, because all of the approaches via land were blocked by cliffs and drop-offs.   

​With that important piece of recon completed, we started working our way back down towards the anchorage.  We both agreed that we should try and ski on the flanks of the glacier the next day and the weather forecast sounded promising.  We were just wondering aloud what Clint and Reina had been up to when we rounded a bend and there they were walking along in matching outfits.  It was a joyous reunion and we decided to cook up a big tex-mex pot luck dinner (complete with cocktails and a great sunset) on Karma.  

We woke up in a haze and I started gathering my things together for the ski mission.  I’d broken my skis weeks before in Argentina, but a friend had offered me one of her old pairs and I still needed to move the bindings over.  Mounting bindings isn’t a particularly easy thing even with a jig and all the tools you need, but doing it on a rocking sailboat with a raging hangover and makeshift tools was really taking things to the next level.  First I had to troubleshoot the inverter that seemed to be on the fritz.  After disassembling a few electrical panels, I traced the fault to a blown fuse and we were back in business. 
 
I made a quick, shotty paper jig and taped up an old, worn drill bit to avoid drilling too deep.  Against all odds, everything came together pretty well and by 9AM, I had a pair of early 90’s Salomon X-Mountains all mounted up and ready to shred.  We got on the radio with Karma and started planning our next moves.  The south wind we’d had during the night had started pushing a lot of the pack ice up towards our anchorage.  That said, all of the bigger bergs had run aground short of the shallow zone we were anchored in and the wind seemed to be dying off a bit.  We decided to make a run towards the glacier in the dinghies, but retreat if the wind kicked up or the weather turned threatening.  

​We loaded all the ski gear into the Superhighway and Jess rode with Clint and Reina in their high-powered dinghy.  

​It was a gorgeous morning, and we started exploring a bunch of the bigger bergs, getting up close and checking out all the nooks and crannies.  It almost feels like you have an enormous museum all to yourself, able to freely cruise around these glorious natural sculptures.  

​We even hopped off to walk around on one that seemed particularly stable without much risk of rolling.  

​But was we moved deeper into the pack ice, we found that it was much more dense than it had been the day before and we weren’t sure if we’d be able to even make it to the far shore like we did on the first day.  In retrospect, this change in the character of the ice was almost certainly due to the prevailing southerlies.  Right around this time, the wind started to kick up again and we decided that it was probably time to turn tail and get back to the anchorage to make sure our boats weren’t getting swamped with ice.  We were also a bit worried that the leads we’d used to enter the pack would close up on us and our exit would disappear. 
 
We mixed up a couple of pisco lemonades and began our retreat back to the anchorage.  The pack was slowly closing up around us, so it was a good call and we found the sailboats unmolested when we got back.  

I was a bit disappointed that we hadn't gotten to do any skiing, but the boats were safe and we had better confidence in our anchorage after a full day of south winds.  The high pressure was predicted to last for another couple days and we decided to make another run for the south coast (and our ski objective) the next day.  

Stay tuned for the dramatic ski attempt on the San Rafael Glacier in the next installment of the Voyage of the Rascal.  

Patty Murphy was a great friend and mentor of mine during my days at Bucknell (he was president of the ski team my sophomore year) and he moved out to Vail after he graduated.  We were never more than a few hour drive from each other and we got to do a lot of partying and skiing over the years, with rendezvous in the Utah desert, the central rockies, and the backwoods of Montana.  

I hadn’t gotten to see him since my going-away asado in Salt Lake almost two years ago, so when he proposed a trip to visit me in Chile, I said yes immediately!  As a bonus, he was bringing along his girlfriend, Haleigh, a Vail local that skins faster than a spandex-clad-randonerd and had strong enough cribbage skills to give me a real run for my money.  Truly a force to be reckoned with!

We met up at the airport in Puerto Montt and everyone’s bellies were rumbling for some Chilean grub.  We went straight to the best pichanga bar in town and ordered up a round or two of pisco sours and caught up on the last two years of our lives. 

That turned out to be just what we needed and I mentioned that there was a traditional Chilean drink that (I’m embarrassed to say) I hadn’t tried yet.  It’s called a terremoto (earthquake) and it consists of a sweet white wine, a splash of grenadine, and a scoop of pineapple ice cream.  They’re a sweet, powerful concoction, and when you stand up after one and notice the room is shaking, you suddenly understand the reasoning behind their name.  

As you can imagine, those went over great with the team and by the time we went to bed that night, everyone’s fear of earthquakes had disappeared and everyone’s Spanish skills had improved tenfold. 

The next day, we had a leisurely morning, put on all of our ski gear, and took the bus (amid stares from confused Chileans) up to Puerto Varas to meet my friend Jess for a little afternoon skiing on Volcan Osorno, a little mom-and-pop operation above Lago Llanquihue.  

It was the weekend so there were scores of Chileans heading up in two wheel drive sedans to go sledding on the flanks of the mountain and it was quite an entertaining, if frustrating, drive to get up to the ski area.  The upper cone of the volcano was going in and out of the clouds and by the time we hopped on the ski lift it was totally socked in.

We couldn’t see more than a turn or two ahead, but the snow was absolutely great (we described it as being cream-cheesey) and we carefully sliced and diced our way around volcanic rocks that seemed to be sticking out of the snow all over the place.  Eventually the clouds broke apart and we got a view across to Volcan Calbuco and down towards the lake.  

Jess’s truck was triple parked in by the intrepid sledding crowd, so we decided a few pisco sours by the wood stove in the lodge might be a nice way to warm up after skiing in the clouds all afternoon.  We still didn’t have a solid plan for where we’d go for the rest of the trip, but Jess offered to let us use her extra car (a lovely white Toyota Corolla which we soon named Karen) and it looked like the best weather would be a couple hours drive to the north.  Thus, we cheersed "To The North!" and to the north is exactly where we went!

The following day was nice and clear and we spent it working our way slowly through the Chilean countryside, stopping for the occasional empanada on the side of the road.  We eventually found ourselves in a little hostel outside the village of Malacahuello.  We took it pretty easy that night and retired early with plans of trying to skin up Volcano Lonquimay early the next morning while the weather was still clear.    

Eventually the sun caught up with us and we got to enjoy the second half of the skin totally bathed in alpenglow.   

The wind continued to build as we got higher on the volcano and by the time we got up to the summit pitch, it raging in our faces.  There were times when it could even blow you back down the skin track.  We knew it would only get worse with elevation and on the exposed ridgeline it’d be downright unsafe, so we decided to bail.  It was a bit of a bummer to not reach the crater, but we were able to console ourselves with four thousand vertical feet of soft wind-buff.

There is only one thing to do when weather kicks you off of a Chilean volcano - we spent the rest of the day soaking in Malacahuello hot springs, drinking wine and watching the clouds build in.  

The next day had rain and more high winds on the docket, so we elected to take a rest day to explore another set of hot springs in the area.  They're out in the boonies and it was an adventuresome drive working our way out to them.  

The Rio Blanco hot springs are a bit more natural than others in that neck of the woods, with stone tubs, a stream running past, and trees overhanging the whole thing.  

Clouds built and parted throughout the day and there was a great view of the Sierra Nevada mountains from our tub.  

We brought sandwich makings and plenty of Escudos and whiled away the day soaking, listening to tunes, playing cribbage, and chatting with the proprietor of the joint who had excellent stories to tell.  He gave us all the delicious mineral water we could drink and told us great stories about the various times he'd gotten kicked out of Argentina.  He was a real character, and was happy to put up with all of our shenanigans.  

The next day was predicted to be warm, sunny, and clear so we got an early start on the road to Volcan Llaima.  After the restorative waters of Termas Rio Blanco, we were really primed up and the stoke level was high.  Unfortunately, google maps isn’t particularly reliable in this part of the world and it routed us on a shortcut to the base of the volcano that was closed off by snow at that time of year.  

This would’ve have been a big deal, but it meant an extra hour of backtracking and then another two hours to work our way around to the other side of the volcano on dirt roads.  The volcano felt so close, but in reality it was still three hours away.  By the time we finally got to the small ski area at the base of the volcano, it was nearly noon and the sun was really cooking.

After getting shut down on Lonquimay early in the week, everyone was really raring to go and we set a mean pace up the side of Llaima.  The approach is a bit long, and we wound our way through lots of low angle lava flows before we got to the proper summit cone.  Distances and elevations are really tough to gage on these volcanoes because of the lack of trees or any other thing to compare for scale.  It looked like we were nearly there, but in reality we still had about three thousand vertical feet to go.

We alternated between skinning and booting as we worked our way up the cone and eventually we spotted some mountaineers higher up that looked smaller than ants to give us some perspective.  We redoubled our efforts and made good time on the upper snowfields. 

The views of the surrounding countryside (with volcanoes speckled throughout) were stupendous and it was tough to concentrate on climbing.  As much as I love skiing volcanoes, I might’ve been just as happy to bask in the sunshine and take in the view for hours on end.  

One thing we could make out from down below were the volcanic vents on the side of the mountain slowly letting out steam and melting snow.  These vents slowly create small crevasses where they’ve melted fresh (or windblown) snow and sometimes their tough to spot.  You can imagine how they’re quite a hazard to the alpinist, especially when they’ve had a couple of days to work their magic without any fresh snow to bridge over them. 

We eventually ran into some Basque ski mountaineers (randonerds in the truest sense) and they reported having fallen into a half dozen of them during their ascent of the final hundred meters of the climb.  At that point, the corn snow from lower on the mountain had given way to a mix of ice chunks and deep sun cups.  The snow conditions, combined with the prospect of dying in a volcanic vent crevasse, made the decision an easy one: we would ski from there and, once again, forsake the summit.  

The ski descent was one of the coolest of my entire life.  

The upper section was good and steep, with sections of good soft corn between the chunder and ice chunks.  We were careful to dodge vents were we could see them and we all made it through unscathed.  

As we got lower on the mountain, the pitch moderated and we found ourselves swooping through lava tunnels with crazy wind features and natural half pipes.  The snow had cooked long enough that it was good and soft and we hooted and hollered the whole way.

We skied a slightly different route than we had climbed and as we got back towards tree line we did some traversing up and down through the lava flows to get back to the trailhead.  It felt like a hell of an accomplishment and some celebratory beers were definitely in order after such a long day.  We had been considering a late evening drive back to Puerto Montt and then an early morning bus to Bariloche, but the weather there had been hot and was expected to get cold again without any fresh snow in the forecast.  We knew we’d end up skiing on concrete and the weather for Chile seemed much better, so we decided to find a spot to spend the night.  The bartendress pointed us in the direction of some cabanas down in the village of Cherquenco which were supposed to be good and cheap.

As we pulled into the driveway, we were greeted by a pack of small dogs that seemed eager to eat us for dinner and a dark-haired woman popped her head out the door to greet us.  She looked a bit suspicious, but was friendly and the little cabin she had was wonderful, with a kitchen and several bedrooms and bathrooms all to ourselves.  We got to chatting with her and her husband and found that they were half Italian and half Arabic and had moved to Chile several years before. 

Now, I’ve never met a gypsy in the flesh before, but these folks, combined with the vibe of the whole place, immediately struck me as gypsyesque and we couldn’t help but make jokes about it the whole night.  Pat tried to collect some of their tears, which are, of course, a powerful ingredient in potions, but he was unsuccessful.  


The next morning was also nice and clear and we up to a little lodge on the other side of Llaima to do some more exploring.  Tree line was a bit higher there and there was only one type of tree on offer: the legendary Monkey Puzzle tree. 

We skinned up a good distance to explore more of the cool wind features that build up around the lava flows and then made a bunch of short laps through the trees.

It was another perfect sunny day and smiles and Escudos abounded.  

The next couple of days looked stormy.  As we had found out at this point, storms in Chile normally mean high winds and high winds mean chairlifts don’t spin.  Thus, we decided to wait out the weather again and hang tight for another window of no precip and low winds.  Our cheap little homey cabana was the perfect place to do that from.   After a quick food run, we sent the first day holed up, playing cribbage with the wood stove roaring, the wine flowing, and the rain coming down in droves. 

The next day we were feeling well rested and a bit more ambitious and we decided to head north to another hot springs that we hadn’t seen yet.  They had a website that looked really promising and made mention of how exceptionally hot their springs were.  It was up in the mountains and as we gained elevation, the rain eventually turned to slush… and then the slush turned to a light layer of snow.  Karen had no problem working her way through it, but there were several busses stopped along the side of the dirt road and eventually we came to one that was blocking it entirely and was clearly having issues making it up a hill.  We stopped to let them get out of the way.  A half hour slowly marched by and they made little progress.  Eventually a group of surly passengers from the bus trudged up to us said that we would have to turn around because the bus could “never make it past us”.  There was clearly plenty of space, but they wouldn’t take no for an answer and we turned Karen around and pointed her back up the road away from the hot springs until we found an extra wide spot with at least two lanes of passing space.  It was clear that the process of getting the stuck bus around all of the other stopped busses would take hours, so we decided to hoof it the remaining 3 kilometers to the hot spring – the only snag was that I’d just brought sandals.  It was a cold, wet, slushy walk, and a shuttle from the hotel at the hot springs buzzed past and totally splashed us with muddy slush as we walked up the hill.  Talk about adding insult to injury.

All of these stupid shenanigans wouldn’t have seemed so bad if we’d arrived and been able to jump into some glorious steaming hot springs, but instead we jumped in to find that they were barely luke warm.  We spent enough time for each of us to drink a beer and then trudged another three kilometers in the snow and sleet back to the car.  Hands down my least favorite hot springs in all of Chile.

Spirits were pretty low at this point, so we decided to head back to the cabana and fire up a big delicious dinner to bring us back to life.  Ribs and baked beans it was, and we all felt much better after a few glasses of wine, a hot meal, and a few games of cribbage.  

We left our gypsy cabana early the next morning and made the drive back up to Lonquimay.  It had rained almost up to the parking lot so the road was clear and the cloud deck had risen enough to make out the summit in the early morning light.  We met a few Spaniards in the parking lot that were also going for the summit and we each wished each other well. 

This time around, we elected to buy lift tickets and try to get a bunch of skiing in before we made for the summit.  It was some of the oddest snow I’ve ever seen – windblown and extra grabby – but we had a blast lapping it and waiting for the t-bar on the upper part of the mountain to open.

The wind was still blowing with some force and the clouds were threatening to close in again, so we made for the summit at the first opportunity.  A couple hundred feet of skinning brought us up to the final ridge where the wind had blown the snow into a bunch of ice bulges.  We switched over to crampons and slowly booted our way up to the crater with the clouds just skimming above our heads and the surrounding volcanoes beginning to disappear into the overcast.  Pat and Haleigh looked down into the crater in awe and we all took a moment to rest and collect ourselves.  We’d finally made it to a summit!

The slope immediately in front of us looked to be wind loaded from the storm, so we decided it would be best to wrap around to the slope I’d skied with Porter a month before.  It was during this process that we realized Pat was missing his beacon.  He’d definitely had it on in the parking lot, which meant that he must’ve left it behind somewhere during the climb while he was changing layers.  With the way the wind was blowing it seemed unlikely that it’d still be there if we went back for it, so we decided to charge ahead and get off the summit before we lost visibility.  

It turned out that the aspect we chose had the best snow we’d seen all day and we ripped big, fast turns all the way down.  We pulled up at the base area with huge smiles on our faces and exchanged copious high fives all around.  It was the longest run of Haleigh and Pat’s illustrious skiing careers and we were all really stoked to finally have ticked off a big objective.  Beers were enjoyed in the lodge and eventually we ran into the Spaniards who had come across Pat’s beacon on the ridge and brought it back down for us – talk about a lucky day!

The next day we drove back to Puerto Montt through the rain and packed everything up for the flight back home.  We went out to a big German dinner and polished off more than our fair share of local microbrews.  

The end of their trip marked the end of two whirlwind months of land travel, and while I had a big smile on my face, I was worn out and needed a few weeks to recuperate before the party can continue.  Spring is starting to arrive and the rainy days are becoming fewer and fewer.  Another friend arrives soon and I'm in the process of getting the Rascal ready for several months of cruising deeper into Patagonia!

My brother and I managed to ski from the crater of a volcano during our time touring around Chile, and it was just enough to wet my whistle.  I didn’t know it at the time, but I was about to kick off three weeks of Chilean volcano schussing, high adventure, and hot spring soaking with a fair bit of wine drinking mixed in for good measure.  It was exactly the reason I sailed to Chile, and I had just the right cast of characters to bring it all together!

After my family flew back to the states, I zipped back south to grab all my ski gear and caught another bus to the north to meet my long-lost friend Thomas.

Thomas and I built skis together at Black Diamond for four years and had a lot of fun doing it. We got to travel all over the place – visiting suppliers, going to trade shows, and working with factories – and Thomas was hands-down my favorite person to travel with.  It was always an adventure – from late night beers at the Hofbrau house with Conrad Anker – to a literal “Chinese Downhill” at the indoor ski area in Shenzen, China.  Needless to say, this trip lived up to my high expectations. 

After he left Black Diamond, Thomas became the president of Avatech, a snow safety technology company in Park City.  It’s tough to test digital avalanche probes during the Northern Hemisphere summer, so a trip to Chile was the best option.  Thomas invited me along to help with testing, serve as a translator, and take pictures and videos of the whole program.  He flew into Santiago, scooped me up off the side of the road in Chillan late one afternoon, and we made a bee-line for the snowy peaks that were an hour or two to our east. 

Nevados de Chillán is a string of five volcanoes with a ski area by the same name covering the lower flanks.  They’re all quite tall and there is a ton of interesting terrain above treeline.  The entire mountain is built out of lava flows, so there are lots of natural half pipes and swooping curves that’re super fun to surf around on.  Its one of the bigger resorts in Chile and they're way ahead of the game when it comes to sidecountry access and avalanche education.  

It had been snowing for four or five days straight, with one clear day (the day we drove in) and lots more snow on the way.  Our timing couldn’t have been better. 

Also notable are the streams of super hot thermal water that trickle out of the side of the volcano at various points to form the aptly named Termas de Chillán.  It just so happened that we were staying at a hotel situated right next to one of these glorious hot springs, about a quarter of the way up the mountain.  Not too shabby!  

We checked in and met up with Joe, another Avatech engineer that had been there testing for a week already.  With that accomplished and several hours/days of travel behind us, we made the easy decision to head down to the hot springs with a six-pack.  The sun had gone down and it was starting to snow by the time we got out, and its safe to say that the stress of travel had melted away and was replaced by stoke for the rest of the trip!

We made it back to the hotel just in time to partake in the all-you-can-eat dinner buffet.  Which consisted, naturally, of steak, crab claws, and fresh scallops among dozens of other things.  It’s safe to say that there was a bit more selection than I’m used to on the Rascal.  With full bellies, we had little option but to examine the offerings at the bar which were quite extensive and I got the opportunity to meet the owner of the resort and the manager of the mountain among other colorful characters. 

We awoke to big flakes and some strong winds trying to push the hotel over.  We slowly stumbled our way down to breakfast, where we found out that the lifts were closed due to the winds (which were slated to get even stronger the next day).  Shucks.  We obviously couldn’t let all of that pow go unskied, and there were some prototype probes that needed testing, so we slapped our skins on and went out for a little tour.

Thus we had the mountain all to ourselves for the next two days.  Two glorious days spent skiing what pow we could find in the trees, digging cavernous snow pits to test probes, and getting spanked by the strong winds.  

The technology in the probes is really quite incredible.  They have a variety of sensors down in the tips of the probe and a user interface at the top.  When you stick the unit down into the snow, it takes a bunch of readings and eventually spits out a chart of the snow hardness with respect to depth.  Using this information, you can quickly draw some general conclusions about the state of the snowpack and track which problem layers might be capable of creating avalanches.  

Once we were done for the day, we’d retire to the hot springs for a soak and a few beers and watch the flakes continue to fall.  Once we were done there – we’d amble on over to dinner and sample whatever the nights’ glorious offerings were.  After dinner, there was always some live music, or at the very least some drunk Brazilian girls singing karaoke!  I was in heaven.  

After a couple days of this (and right when I thought life couldn't possibly get any better), a truck full of professional snowboarders showed up.  Thus, for the rest of the trip, I got to know Jeremy Jones, Forrest Shearer, and Nick Russell.  They were all there filming for next year's snowboard videos and we drank beers in the hot springs with them each afternoon and ate dinner in the lodge with them each night.

They'd all done some incredible traveling and had great stories to tell.  They'd just been out surfing along the coastline and came up to Nevados de Chillan to catch a weather window that was expected in a few days.  They were also curious to hear about the voyage of the Rascal and it was fun to share my story with them.  There was a semi-frozen tub next to the hottest hot spring to go for the "polar plunge" effect and each evening we'd push it a little longer in the cold tub.  By the end of the trip I managed seven or eight minutes!

And then, to our great delight, the wind stopped and the sun came out!

We could finally see all the awesome terrain on offer, and we had a blast surfing around the mountain and digging into the nooks and crannies we hadn't been able to tour to.  Unfortunately the upper part of the mountain was still closed, but luckily the weather was predicted to hold out for a few days.

Part of the reason for Thomas’ trip was education.  Avatech makes lots of powerful tools (both on the hardware and software side) and they’re no good if you don’t know how to use them.  Thus we had a couple of sessions with the gentlemen that work in mountain operations for Nevados de Chillan to teach them about all the technology.   It was in this manner that I got to meet Ro.

Ro (short for Rodrigo) is a total badass from Punta Arenas that gets to ski all winter (he works with mountain ops and ski patrollers to understand the snowpack and keep skiers safe) and go on adventures in southern Patagonia all winter.  He has explored a bunch of the fjords I'm planning to visit while guiding scientific expeditions and he showed me a bunch of incredible pictures and shared all sorts of tips and tricks for navigating in the far south.  As you might expect, he is also a ripping skier.  

After another night of hot springing and beer drinking, we awoke to find the upper mountain was open and we met up with a friend of a friend, Alex Taran, to do a little more exploring.  Alex runs the South American Beacon Project which seeks to help get donated beacons into the hands of mountain professionals in South America that wouldn't otherwise have the money to afford them.  She also does a lot of courses to educate folks and she has spent several years living around Chillan.  

There were all kinds of pow to be accessed from the upper part of the mountain and we followed Alex out into the side country to explore the "dedos" a series of chutes off to the lookers right side of the ski area.  They were choc full of the snow that'd been falling all week and we got to ski a couple thousand feet of glorious untouched Andean pow.  

The terrain accessed by that upper lift is really top notch and when we weren't digging pits to test prototypes, we were getting as rowdy as possible and soaking up the sunshine and pow.

That afternoon, as shadows were starting to get long, and I was thinking that the day couldn't possibly get any better, we got invited on a cat ride up above the ski area.  

It was my first time in a cat and the scenery, circumstances, and snow were all absolutely astounding.  When we got to the saddle below the crater of the caldera, the cat stopped and let us out.  I'm not sure if its normal protocol or not, but Ro broke out a nalgene of delicious homemade pisco sours and we all cheersed to Chile!

The rest of the group skied down from there, but Thomas, Joe, and I couldn't pass up the chance to get up on the summit.  It was a short skin to the top and the stoke built with every step.    

You could see steam rising out from the vents at the edges of the crater, but you could also see glorious pow, and as we looked down into its depths, it was clear that there was only one thing we could possibly do in this situation: ski into the crater of an active volcano.  

Thomas led the charge (literally and figuratively) and decided airing into the center would be the best course of action.  

It was a quick, easy boot up out of the center of the crater and before we knew it we were back up on the ridgeline.  

Stoke was high and our mission was far from over - we still had 5500 vertical feet of pow to ski back down to the lodge.  

As we worked our way around the rim to the aspect we wanted to ski, we came upon a bunch of volcanic vents that were steaming and sizzling in the sunshine.  At that moment it became clear to me that I was about to fulfill what was, perhaps, my highest calling in life.  I reached into my pack, pulled out a smoked sausage, and lovingly nestled it down in the hot, black rocks.    

I'll forever remember it as the day that I skied into an active volcano, roasted a smoked sausage over a volcanic vent, and then had the longest powder run of my life.

With our bellies full, and a great mission fulfilled, we got down to business and did some top-notch schussing as afternoon slowly faded into evening.

Unfortunately, the time had come for the band to break up - Thomas had to be up in Portillo the following morning.  That said, it was the perfect cap to an incredible trip and we all went our separate ways with big smiles on our faces.  Nevados de Chillan was an incredible mountain and I'll never forget the awesome people I met nor the sunshiney pow we got to ski there!