Helly Hansen

Travel report from our road trip in The Andes - Chile/Argentina (part 1) For the time being I'm sitting at hotell Portillo at about 3000 meters above sea level sipping on an espresso and watching the mountains getting snowed on. It's beautiful and relaxing, but at the same time exciting since its going to be cold and sunny tomorrow. I'm here with fellow team-mate Didrik Falck-Pedersen, his sister Karine, Morten Wangen, and Even Ofstad. Our guide from Southamericaski.com Mark Lasseter is here too. The trip over from Oslo was long and exhausting, but it was worth while. After settling in Santiago and sightseeing the town for a day we went to El Colorado - a resort 1,5 hour drive from Santiago. El Colorado is situated between two other resorts^ La Parva and Valle Nevado. El Colorado has the best out of bounds skiing of these three resorts. We got a van and a driver and did what they here call the road runs. You taket he lift all the way to the top and traverse to the backside of El Colorado viewing Valle Nevado. Last time it had snowed was 3 days ago, but still many of the chutes were untouched. The backside was lapsed a couple of times while our driver was at the bottom waiting tatt he bottom o take us back to the resort. We had heard alot of good things about Portillo - resort about two hours away from Santiago towards the Argentine border. After a down day, driving around in our rental van trying to fix Morten's skis, we packed all our stuff and headed towards Portillo. Here I felt like I saw the sweetest terrain I had ever seen. And the skiing out of bounds was so easily accessed. Just take the lift and traverse. Awesome! We found various depths of cold smokey powder, butt he skiing in general was great from a beautiful bluebird day. Our stay in Portillo is coming to an end. The next stop on the trip is to spend the night in a little town called Los Andes. On the way we will stop at a vineyard to "taste" some Chillenean wine, and perhaps, if the weather allows it, to go cat-skiing in Ski Arpa tomorrow. So do keep checking in hellyhansen.com for more updates. The net around the Andes is a bit unstable, but I'll do my best. Thank you again for letting me share! - Pedro and the rest of the crew.