Trip Report from Tuesday, September 29, 2026

In local Mapuche myth, Lanín Volcano (Pillañzegüñ) is a sacred site guarded by a powerful god called Pillán — a spirit of fire, thunder, and ancestors. As legend has it, when a local tribe angered the spirit by hunting the sacred huemul deer on its slopes, the volcano erupted with devastating lava and ash. To appease Pillán’s wrath, the chief’s daughter, Huilefún, was brought up the mountain as a sacrifice by a brave young warrior named Talka. But Talka was secretly in love with Huilefún and could not bring himself to throw her into the volcano’s crater; instead, he laid her down on a protected part of the slope, hoping she would somehow escape. 

As Talka began his descent, the sky darkened with colossal storm clouds. A giant Andean condor with eyes like burning embers swept down from the summit. Without landing, the bird scooped up Huilefún in its talons and carried her directly into the glowing crater.

Immediately, heavy snow began to fall, blanketing the mountain in white and extinguishing the fiery eruption. Pillán was calmed, and ever since, Lanín’s internal fires have remained trapped under a perpetual dome of ice and snow…

12,388′ Volcán Lanín 

Neuquén

Argentina

• Summit: 12,388 feet
• Car: 3,756 feet
• Vertical from car: 8,632 feet
• Vertical skied: 8,048 feet
  
• Max pitch: 50º
• Average pitch: 35º
• Aspect: E-NE
• Distance: 10 miles round trip
• Hiking time from car to summit: 9 hours & 40 minutes
• Car to car time: 12 hours & 45 minutes
• Recommended equipment: crampons, ski crampons, ice axe(s), skins 

I got the crazy idea to go and attempt the biggest day I’ve ever shot for in the mountains, by my lonesome, the night before, on the way home from skiing the lower flanks of the stunning Volcán Lanín with two friendly Argentinian strangers I had just met that morning. They were kind and stoked, as most Argentinians are. We had a great, mellow day on the bottom half of the volcano, skiing wide, low-angle fields of corn snow near a big rock called “Pan Dulce,” named after its striking resemblance to the holiday cake locals here eat around Christmas time. I asked them if they wanted to try for the summit in the morning because there was a weather window — the only one for the next 2 weeks it looked like according to Meteoblue. But they weren’t available tomorrow. I asked some more members in a group chat for skiing in San Martín de los Andes where I was staying, but only silence ensued. So I said screw it, got some beta from Julian at Chilco Experencías, went and rented a car from the nearest Hertz, and packed my bag and set my alarm for 2 a.m.

Wild red deer darted in front of my rental car on the empty highway that cut through the rolling, life-less hills of the region leading up to the volcano. Hazards were presenting themselves before the day even started. I got to the ranger station at 4:45 a.m., 45 minutes later than I had wanted to (I’m not good at waking up in the morning on a regular day) left a note with my details in the registry box since the ledger was locked inside the station, donned a backpack with skis and boots attached, and set off through the creepy, silent, Sleepy Hollow-esque woods. A skeleton of some long-dead animal lay on the side of the trail. Thoughts of getting eaten by a puma crossed my mind a time or two.

An hour later I was on the snowline of the east face of the volcano, making good time. The snow was hard so I kept on going in tennis shoes until it got slippery, then started skiing. All was well.

• Related: Patagonia Report: Party Ski on Cerro Crestón Powder on The Final Day of the SuperNatural Ski Trip

Clouds came and then went, and I was soon above Pan Dulce, 3,000-feet up the slope where I skied with Juan Pablo and Emiliano the day before. Ski crampons came in handy here. I felt good physically, but my route-finding was poor and ultimately led me to switch my ascent plan and traverse to the north to rendezvous with the main climber’s route from the base because the east face I was planning to climb had much more exposure and unknown factors than I had anticipated. I cut over, traversing as quickly as possible under cliffs and cornices with small rocks ranging in size from pebbles to baseballs sprinkling down its slope before anxiously getting to a safe spot to put on crampons on a steep, 50º wall with minimal overhead exposure. Then the actual climb began.

2 ice axes out and crampons here. Helmet on. Finally I got to bust out both axes to play for the first time this season.

I was at almost 10,000 feet now, climbing above a bergstrund, when I started to feel sluggish. I was already getting tired. I fought myself to keep a rhythm with my axe and boot placements: left axe, right foot. Right axe, left foot — and so forth for the next 50 minutes. I crested the steep wall around 1 p.m. and immediately had a snack. A line of volcanoes sprang up like weeds in the dirt in a scattered line that stretched for miles and miles to the north, all the way to Volcán Lonquimay, where I was living in Malacahuello with APEX Backcountry Guides for a couple months earlier this austral winter. It was fun to be on the opposite side of this view for a change. I saw the final pitch to the summit ahead of me, about 2,300 more feet, and thought it was going to be a cake walk. Oh how foolish I was.

• Related: Bariloche, Argentina, Backcountry Report: A Patagonian Picnic at Refugio Frey

The last 2,300 feet was the most time-consuming, energy-draining portion of the climb — maybe my life. I was tired and feeling the altitude after being at lower elevations the entire winter. Also after a lot of beer drinking and partying in Bariloche the week before, on top of a moderate day yesterday, and little sleep. I don’t know how I thought this would be easier. I stopped and had another snack to wonder why.

Another hour blew past. Snack. 100 more feet. Stop and have another snack. 100 more feet. One more sna…—no wait, out of snacks. DO NOT EAT THE SUMMIT PIZZA UNTIL THE SUMMIT. This was my motivation to keep pushing, even when I could only make it 15 steps at a time. Head down, keep chugging. Don’t look at the distance to go — it will only piss you off.  Save the rest of the water. “You’re almost there.”

After a few hours in the thin-air pain cave, wrestling with demons of my mind that love to come out to play when I’m feeling most vulnerable, I scratched and clawed my way through the frozen-cauliflower rime-ice chicken-head ethereal snow formations, onto the breezy summit shining in the sun, and rejoiced. I could eat my pizza now.

Pizza eaten, water drank, prayers said — time to go downtown. But when I went to return the way I came up, the strangest thing happened: I couldn’t find my way down.

The summit wasn’t that wide. I came from just over there. Right? I could literally see all the sides of this summit. I had to have come from that little path over there. So there I went. But the landscape below looked nothing like where I had come from in the wee hours this morning. There was no road where I parked my car. No ranger station. Where the hell was it?

I checked my map and it said go that way. 3% phone battery. Damn, I should not have played some much 90s rap music in the dark part of the climb this morning. But it would last me so long as I didn’t mess around on my phone too much. I followed the map heading and still everything looked unfamiliar. Ultimately I walked around the entire summit for 30 minutes in a circle until I could see the highway way down below the east face I had climbed up, peered over the edge where everything looked like giant death cornice, found my up-track, and then got ready to party.

What happened was I had become disoriented from fatigue and high elevation, of which I’m normally more used to living in higher areas — but not for the past few months. Pillán was playing a sick joke on me and I knew it. I stopped and rested and prayed and got my head straight some more before I started going the opposite of up for the first time since 5 a.m. It was 4 p.m. now and the east face I had wanted to ski from the summit was in the shade, cold and firm and locked up already. I had to take my safer backup option on the north part of the volcano that was lower angle and in the sun. Finally, 11 hours later, I made some turns.

The snow up top was bad and scary. Not death. But not good quality by any means. I survival skied for 500 more feet before I found some chalky snow I could actually ski. Then I went down further, trying to peer over the edge to see where to drop into the east face but everything looked like a nasty cornice that I didn’t want to touch with a 19-foot pole, even if they were mostly iced-over. I went to the closest point I could see that wasn’t a cornice for certain and stopped above the line.

I was now staring down a 50º wall of kind of firm, kind of soft snow that ran for 300 feet to the bergstrund before flattening out into the easy-going rolling slopes of east face that connected back with Pan Dulce. A few hours earlier when it was in the sun and corning up it would have been really fun to ski; now I was just trying to get down it in one piece. I tip-toed in knowing that a fall here would turn me into condor food.

I jumped over the bergstrund at the bottom and let out a cry that was something in-between desperation and ecstasy. That part of the day was done. Now it was smooth sailing back home. In bad snow for the most part.

The bad snow lasted for another couple thousand feet. Then I got onto a softer pitch around 6,500 feet and found what would be one of the greatest discoveries of my young skiing life.

Enter Mega-Tube.

The pitch of softer snow funneled into a big drainage; a perfect gulley 3 halfpipes in diameter and approximately 2 kilometers in length. Upon sliding into its jaws, the snow lost all hints of funkiness and presented itself as perfect hero-corn. In a split-second, all the fear, anxiety, and bizarreness of the day had birthed from it a tube of mythical proportions that just kept going into the halls of eternity. Suddenly everything was worth it.

My GoPro recorded a 4 minute-and-40-second video from the time I hit record above the Mega Tube to when I had stopped at the end of the snow a few thousand feet below. A good feeling stuck with me for a while after that.

On the way out I passed by the same animal bones I had walked past half a day before. It was my marker for the trail home. A sign: of the way back from which we came — of what’s to come for us all. One day indeed. But surely not before our time.

The beers with the Argentinian boys went down smooth that night. The burger was inhaled. The sleep at Hostel El Oso Andaluz was deep and the dreams were sweet. My 10-day adventure high that started with the 18 of September holiday in Chile followed by tailguiding with Chilco at Refugio Frey and then skiing in San Martin had reached its climax, cresting like a wave right before it slammed on a rocky shore and slowly rolled back. The next day the rain returned. Doubt and uncertainty once again filled my mind. I didn’t know what to do or where to go next. Everything was up in the air once again. More unknowns. More bad weather. I sipped another coffee and closed my eyes and thought back to my day on the volcano and let the feeling I had at the bottom of that 8,000-foot run come like the condor that swooped up the chief’s daughter and fly me away to somewhere a little brighter.