A photo feature from The Ski Journal, Volume Thirteen, Issue Four, January 2020
Immediately after touching down in Chaitén, Chile, the stories began. Host and fishing guide Juan Carlos Castaing rode shotgun in the van en route to Rio Palena Lodge and pointed out a mile or more expanse of what looked like gravel, atop what used to be a village until 2008. Chaitén Volcano, the culprit in the village’s demise, still released small, but intimidating plumes as we drove past.
Continuing down the road past hanging glaciers, clear blue waters, and rainforests blooming with life, Juan Carlos told stories that blurred the lines between myth and reality. Our current situation blurred those lines in my mind—it was hard to believe we were going on a pioneering heli-ski trip in northern Patagonia, in November, to ski previously unridden lines. It was a stark contrast to the muted greys and browns of the post-autumn northern hemisphere.
Arriving at the lodge, lead ski guide Alan Bernholtz suggested that if we couldn’t ski due to weather, perhaps we’d like to prep a local eagle carcass for a mounting above the bar. While my travel companions Alyssa Seeman and Crystal Sagan, and myself laughed nervously, Alan made it clear that, while we wouldn’t be partaking in taxidermy 101, he did have a large bird in the freezer at home. It was the impetus for naming one of the new ski runs him and fellow guide Drew Daly have been developing over the past several months. They’d named it Electric Eagle. The remainder of the story on how they obtained the bird may seem outlandish but was a true homage to the condor’s place as the king of the South American sky. Soaring solo near 10,000 feet in the high alpine, it literally does not move for a helicopter.
Alan told us tales of a stream so clear that the fish in it adapted to have translucent tails. Being the former mayor of Crested Butte and a world renowned heli guide, he hosted us like a pro for three days and mixed folklore with wisdom better than ten out of ten politicians ever could.
On the last morning Drew pulled up the GIS app on his computer and showed me the 90 or so named runs they had mapped, and the potential region they had not yet scouted in full. It started to really sink in that we were just scratching the surface of what was possible around there. Circling landing zones in the heli and gaining the condor’s angle over thousands of feet of perfect corn skiing peppered with waterfalls, exposed ice and massive cliffs fronted by dense forest to the valley floor helped put our diminutive scale into perspective.
Before we left for the trip, I asked Alan on the phone what the plan was in case of emergency. “We hunker down and wait for a rescue,” he said. I found it hard to imagine we couldn’t skin or hike out to a trailhead in a day or two but looking back now I understand the naivety of my question. It made me wonder if Patagonia really is the embodiment of modern mystique. We peered from multiple airborne angles into massifs stacked with couloirs that would be iconic in most mountain ranges. There, they are unnamed and almost guaranteed to be unskied, and there’s usually more of them one ridge over, and on the ridge after that, and as far as the eye can see after that. While they might look obtainable on the map, they are so remote that I can’t imagine too many people will ever know them in my lifetime.
One thing’s for certain: the rugged terrain of northern Patagonia is no longer a myth to me. There are tangible, touchable lines, waiting for those committed or lucky enough to make the journey into the deepest reaches of the Andes.
Thank you to Eleven Experience and Rio Palena Lodge for hosting us on this extraordinary trip to pioneer new lines in Chilean Patagonia. Read more at theskijournal.com/exclusive/riopalenalodge.
