Conditions Report
Report from August 30, 2023
Woke up late today and looked out the window.
Dumping empanadas out there…
Usually, I know I need to get up and get moving early because I hear the rain on the roof all night.
Normally, it rains in town and snows on the mountain.
Not last night.
It snowed in town all night piling up to around 3″ in town which is a lot for here.
It made the roads into pure insanity.
Every crazy with a tiny car with no 4-wheel drive and bald tires was out there trying to get it done.
They all got stuck in the middle of the road and even the buses were too lazy to put chains on and were clogging up roads and spinning out all over the place.
It was full-on Mad Max out there…
Quick story then back to the skiing:
At one point, we were following a bus 🚌 with a cop 🚔 right behind us. The bus swerved to go around 2 of the myriad stuck cars on a little hill in the middle of the road this morning then got stuck in the left ditch on the other side of the road, then kinda got out the ditch, then started sliding backwards into our car! I didn’t know what was best so I decided to be aggressive and I punched it around the bus to the right as it was spinning and sliding backwards. I swerved between the backwards sliding bus and cars stuck in the middle of the road and took the hill! I thought for sure the cop behind me was gonna pull me over for my wild driving but when I looked back he had tried to follow me and gotten stuck in the ditch on the right side of the road! We rally drove Mad Max style all the way to the mountain and skied powder all day 😏. There must have been 40 cars spun out and stuck on our drive in. I love this country because every day is an adventure and you cannot stay in your default mode.
Once we finally got onto the mountain (Cerro Catedral) I went straight for my favorite tree stash knowing there’d be just enough snow to make it epic.
The only issue was that the snow was too dry!
In all my 13 seasons here I don’t think I’ve ever had a day where there was 8-12″ of new snow and I was hitting bottom.
But hit bottom I did.
Up higher in the trees, it was manageable and still fun.
Down low, it was a spooky…
I spent about an hour just bushwhacking, avoiding blowing my knee, and walking along flat terrain just to get out of these trees.
Worth it?
Absolutely!
From there I went back up to the top of the mountains and did a couple laps and randomly got a bit of sun.
The wind was intense up there damn near knocking us over at times.
Some truly Patagonian weather!
I skipped breakfast due to waking up late and pulled off a 20-hour fast today and I think that contributed to me feeling frustrated at times.
I usually am strictly stoked and happy on powder days.
The drive to the mountain frustrated me, the ridiculously changing weather frustrated me, and being frustrated frustrated me!
Once the light went back to flat I headed home on clean, melted-out roads and felt groovy AF.
All that frustration melted off me and I realized it was mostly likely just because I hadn’t eaten.
One amazing weird, intense, frustrating, fun day 🙂
Thanks, Patagonia!
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