Conditions Report
by Casey Earle
On the Sept 16 earthquake, it was 8.4 Richter, lasted over 2 minutes, and shook the hell out of La Parva. The epicenter was about 250km north of Santiago, in a relatively sparsely populated area near Illapel. There have been over 300 aftershocks, including 15 above 6.0, but most have not been perceived in Santiago. 13 dead, hundreds of homes seriously damaged, and the coastal infrastructure was trashed in particular in Tongoy, Coquimbo, and La Serena. Tsunami flowed up to 500m inland. This map shows those replicas above 4, stars are above 5.
Anyone interested in making donations to help the victims of the Illapel quake can make them here: http://www.
Thanks in advance!
The Chilean Patriotic Month celebrations (“Fiestas Patrias”) really take off the week of the 18th of September, and we were in La Parva for the duration.
Friday 11 broke clear and cold, with 25 cm of wind-and-ice-fog-mutated pow, which made for an epic day.
Where huckers huck:
Rime ice on the Fabres rocks:
My son Nico and I ripped powder until we physically couldn’t anymore.
What´s wrong with this picture?
This was followed by 2 days of paradiso bluebird groomers supremo, with the usual suspects animando la fiesta.
Then from Monday on we got stuck with a clump of clouds hovering over the central Andes, with wind gusts up to 80km and snow devils roughing up the powder. Tough times for chairlift rides, making for good times for poma rides, as the on piste snow continued to be wunderbar, mainly on recently groomed southern exposures.
Wednesday it almost snowed but ended up just blowing and a few flakes fell:
Thursday was clear until 2pm, then fogged up.
Through it all the racers took over the best pistes, running all the variants from slalom to downhill.
On the positive side, the temperature hovered just above zero most of the time, preserving the snow quality. Good off piste is once again limited to certain wind buffs on southern exposures.
