Skiing Chile’s Three Amigos: Powder, Peaks & Llamas

The Three Amigos. Skiing the Chilean Andes.

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Some of the ski lodge guests were a bit rude. One kept grunting at me and another one did a big crap just outside my room.

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That's what happens when you stay at a ski lodge in the Andes in Chile and you have a family of fluffy llama’s camped in the front yard outside your bedroom window.

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I’m in Chile to ski Tres Valle, or what I dubbed, the Three Amigos – even though there are four ski resorts: Farellones, La Parva, El Colorado and Valle Nevado. They are all only a short drive from the country’s biggest city and capital Santiago, and between them have over one hundred kilometres of ski runs and more than fifty ski lifts.

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Farellones
Not long after leaving the suburbs of Santiago you climb steadily up the edge of a steep gorge past stone and wooden houses balanced precariously on stilts. As you drive higher into the Andes, the trees disappear and you start to cross the archetypal South American prairie - albeit on a 45-degree angle. Washed-out brown mountains are covered with patches of orange and yellow desert flowers and dotted with two-metre-high cacti.

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The first ski village you come to is Farellones, only 30 kilometres up from the Santiago – and when I say up, it’s almost straight up. It’s so close you can just about smell the asados (Chilean barbecues) from the suburbs of Santiago below.

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I’m staying in Farellones, and although it is 2,430 metres high, the adjoining ski area has only a handful of lifts, so I’m hitting the other three amigos.

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La Parva
I think the skiing at La Parva is good. The runs looked impressive on the trail map at least. The wide-open bowl is home to 15 lifts and there is plenty of good skiing from beginners to experts. Although in this case, you needed to be an expert to get down the easiest run in the dense fog. Apparently, you also get expansive views of the Andes and the Santiago skyline from “Condor Balcony” at the top of the Las Águilas lift.

La Parva is perhaps the smartest of three resorts and it’s where the country’s elite have their flash mountain retreats. The restaurants are also very nice. I may have spent way too much time at lunch out of the fog soup and inside the restaurant at the top of the Las Águilas lift snacking on fresh empanadas and a local Cristal beer or two.

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El Colorado
The modern ski village of El Colorado is a 15-minute drive from Farellones up a steep narrow road with 180-degree switchbacks. The fog from the day before had been replaced by horizontal snow, but by the time the shuttle bus reached the ticket office at the top, the snow had stopped falling. It was still a white-out though, and the mountains were under the clouds’ tender embrace.

I got quite the surprise halfway up my first lift. We (as in the chairlift and I) suddenly burst out through the clouds into bright sunshine across an enormous blue sky. I stood at the top of the lift for some time. One of my greatest joys when travelling is discovering something new to see that leaves me totally awed. The mountains that encircled me were dark brutal hulks iced with wisps of cloud wreathed like suspended smoke across their distant summits. I almost crashed on my first few runs because I couldn’t keep my eyes off the growing army of majestic peaks that were revealed as higher clouds drifted in and out. At least there wasn’t much chance of crashing into anyone. I just about had the mountain to myself.

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I had an unforgettable day. I spent the morning on my own personal ski lift, then skiing back down on soft snow. I lunched in the sun on a huge terrace with only four other diners, then spent the afternoon weaving through steep fields past gargantuan boulders. Towards the end of the day the extraordinary views got even better as the clouds slid down the mountains to reveal an overpowering vista of brown rocky valleys and still more jagged peaks.

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Valle Nevado
Here’s a tip for skiing in the high Andes: put on sunblock. You’d think I’d know better. I know the weather in the mountains can change in an instant, so why hadn’t I taken any sunblock with me up to El Colorado the day before? Now I looked like Mr. Tomato Head. It was another stunning bluebird day, so I (yes, a little too late) slathered on sunblock.

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The resort of Vallee Nevada looked as if they had shaved the top off a mountain to put in the parking lot and an impressively monolithic hotel (which I later discovered had quite the unique take on après ski with a pool-sized hot tub filled with folks drinking pisco sours while playing volleyball).

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I went straight up Tres Puntas, the highest lift at 3,670 metres, then dropped off the run (actually, it was more like dropping off a cliff) into a stash of wind-blown powder. I met Miguel, a local from Santiago, on my second lift and we spent the day crashing untouched powdery chutes and cruising long wide-open runs.

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On our last run for the day Miguel pointed out the highest peak (El Plomo at 5,430 metres), where a few years ago an Inca mummy was found preserved in the ice. “The virgin Inca princess took two weeks to walk to the summit in bare feet and then she was sacrificed,” Miguel told me.

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They may not be sacrificing virgin princesses anymore, but skiing the Three Amigos you’ll find virgin powder runs, overly dramatic peaks, uncrowded slopes and dopey llamas to take selfies with.

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ABOUT

La Parva
Skiable terrain: 325 hectares
Number of lifts: 15

Terrain breakdown: Beginners 20%; Intermediate 20%; Advanced 43%; Expert 18%

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El Colorado
Skiable terrain: 1,300 hectares
Number of lifts: 16

Terrain breakdown: Beginners 17%; Intermediate 17%; Advanced 32%; Expert 34%

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Valle Nevado
Skiable terrain: 890 hectares
Number of lifts: 17

Terrain breakdown: 14% Beginner; 25% intermediate; 41% Advanced; 20% Expert

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Lift Pass (per day):