Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Patagonian Summer - Long Lines POV
by Miles Clark

The Patagonian winter has finally come to a close here in Bariloche. The beginning of September brought us about 3 meters of snow in a week. It was kinda insane. No, it was really insane. I´ve never seen it snow anywhere as hard as I´ve seen it snow here. Snowflakes the size of golf balls falling at rates of many inches per hour for days. Mid storm avalanches that vaporized one refugio and left debris piles 10+ meters high in places. Screaming winds the plastered snow to the Lenga forests and their dripping mosses in ways and angles that I still don´t understand.

We harvested all that we could from the big snows and got some pretty vicious perma-smiles in the process. Not long after the storms stopped, the heat came and like that, it switched from full-on nuclear winter to warm easy going springtime. As soon as that pollen laden spring air hit my nostrils, I twitched and my brain automatically switched to summer mode. I am currently undergoing my quest to salvage the remnants of the California summer. I really need to surf. I´m dying to hit my favorite cliff diving spots in the foothills. And yes, there better still be some girls in bikinis at the lake!

Here is a short pov video that shows two of the longer backcountry lines that we´ve been skiing (before the storms). The first I call ´Little AK´ off the Zebra Chutes and the second is Tage Chute´s ´Staff Party´. After those two lines is just some fun pow skiing after the big storms.

Patagonia Summer - Crush A Lot from UnofficialSquaw on Vimeo.

Friday, September 3, 2010

Patagonian Summer - 141 Degrees SSE

Patagonian Summer - 141 Degrees SSE

This summer continues to be un-summer-like.....which is the point down here, I suppose. Yet, the relentless lack of girls in bikinis is beginning to take it's toll. Thank God the skiing has been good!

During the first two weeks of August a big high pressure system came in and sat over us for about a week. We used this opportunity to get deep into the backcountry. Two different groups head to refugio Frey (a backcountry hut here) and got after it for a few days each. The rest of us were doing long single day backcountry trips from the top of the ski resort everyday. The temps stayed cold and good snow was found on all the south and east facing aspects with 141 degrees SSE being the money spot. I'm now sorta obsessed with this number and constantly bust out my compass to test potential backcountry terrain against it.

We had some real fun and I got to ski my favorite line down here which I generically call 'Little AK', (in the video Pete Connley skis parts of it) even tho there really isn't too much little about it. That line already has me dreaming of an AK trip this April.

We are getting hammered with snow again right now and the forecast is showing a huge amount of snow, then very cold temps. We're lining up some bigger lines that those conditions would be money for. I'll keep ya posted.

Here's a video edit that Garret Russel put together for us of Session 2.

SASS Session 2 Ski Podcast - Summer Shredding in Bariloche, Argentina from Snow Sessions on Vimeo.