The time has come to say ciao to Valle de Las Lenas, and it seems like it might be the right time for us to take off. After two weeks of endless fall line corn runs, interspersed with interesting runs in steep scary ice chutes and drop-in zones, and one after another of towering couloir walls, we have had our fill. And it seems not a minute too soon, since the snow line is creeping up, and some of the outs from the backcountry have become epic walks in mud and dirt. The snow remains packed on the flanks of the mountains up high and the skiing is still good, but the clouds that were supposed to become the Santa Rosa have so far not presented any powder beyond a trace of new. (The clouds are still hovering with potential, although, clearly this is affecting the quality of our corn snow. It has caused it to turn into frozen chunder and icy hell, to be quite honest.) But even with the snow not softening up as much as it was due to colder temperatures, we had a great last couple days. Some were most fun in the disco at 5am, but that is another story.

But when you are out there, a lucky phenomenon here is that under the couloirs, fingers of snow still snake all the way down to the valley floor, with wide patches of grass tufts in between, like little snow highways that take you all the way down, if not all the way back to the resort.  I have never seen anything like it, since as we all know usually the snow melts from the bottom up, not in stripes...but I really like this stripe thing, it has come in pretty handy. You can check out Duct Tape Pete and Jess McMillan, skiing the corn ribbons down low, who have posted some photos on powder.com. However, the word is that some of the crew from 307 are over the spring skiing and beating a hasty retreat to places like Brazil for surfing, or making their way back to Wyoming to get ready for our own winter. But, as far as our crew goes, we are pretty stoked to move onto our next task, a small refugio northwest of Las Lenas, near the Chilean border, and since the mountains west of Las Lenas have way more snow than the resort, we are very excited. It is about time to be in deeper snow, and as fun as it is to run into familiar faces out of the blue, on foreign ridgelines, it will be nice to not feel quite so at home. Certainly, we will not miss feeling like mackerel in a can in the lift lines, or the temptation to stay out all night (did you know they still serve alcohol at 5 am in the discos here? they do. just for people dumb enough to get some at that hour. and not me, of course.)   But now it is time to really get down to business, and we will report on the pow if we find any out there in the middle of nowhere...and soon, hopefully, it will be in our own backyard.

 

Jackson´s Mot Gatehouse, attacking a (not soft) line he claimed ended in winter powder