Las Lenas, Argentina Backcountry Report: Cliff Hucking in Valle Hermoso

Las Lenas Backcountry Report: Valle Hermoso, August 14th-17th, 2014

Authors: Eike & Dorian

While on the hunt for big pow, babes, and asados, we found ourselves in Valle Hermoso, at a back country refugio in the middle of the Andes, camping for a few days with a really good crew. Valle Hermoso is the neighboring valley close to the Chilean border and it holds a lot more snow, even though it is at the same elevation as the Las Leñas valley. The river supplied us with fresh drinking water and an old abandoned hut provided us with shelter.

We arrived at Sunset on Thursday night still finding some great snow on the lower part of the fingers skiing straight down to the refugio.

Friday we went to ski the Sandwichito zone in the morning. Some fun short lines with cliffs and small couloirs. Great powder at the top, lower down a bit hard and icy parts. In the afternoon we skied the fingers, having great snow top to bottom and beautiful views of the valley. The evenings were spent cooking and making big fires. The night time sky in Valle Hermoso was probably the most impressive thing ever. You can see thousands of stars and the Milky Way perfectly. Amazing!

Saturday we spent skiing the fingers. We shredded major pow, and hit little cliffs and jumps. Everything went very well, except we didn’t see any babes, or any girls at all, and we didn’t eat any ice cream.

With the exception of Dancemore, who left Saturday night, we returned through an area called Paso del Viento on Sunday morning. The return took us about 6 hours and we got to ski el Collar back to the base of Leñas.

Definitely a highlight of the season here so far for us and great to get a away from the long weekend crowds and lift lines

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