Skiing in July! July 16, 2014

July 16 in the southern hemisphere is like January 16 in the northern hemisphere.  However, Santiago is much warmer in the winter than Iowa.  In fact, there have been a few afternoons when highs were in the sixties and Lindsay and I could sit outside on the their terrace and work on our tan (this was helped in part due to direct sunlight and a little bit of a greenhouse effect because of the layout of their terrace).  So even though it's winter here, it's more like a California winter since Santiago is at 33* S latitude and Los Angeles is at 34* N latitude.

July 16 was a national holiday since it was the feast day of the Virgen del Carmen, the patron saint of Chile.  We were fortunate enough that one of Garv's co-workers lined up a ski outing for half price--transportation, equipment rental, and lift tickets for $120 a piece.

Our morning started at 7:00 when the rest of the group--Diego and some other of Garv's co-workers and their girlfriends--arrived at Garv and Lindsay's apartment.  The van driver was supposed to pick us up at 7:00.  He arrived an hour late at 8:00, which is very common in Chile and drives Garv nuts (it would drive me nuts, too, if I lived here).  Our first stop was the equipment rental shop which was in Santiago.  It was not efficiently run, which is also very common in Chile and drives Garv nuts (it would drive me nuts, too, if I lived here), and after a little over two hours or procuring gear, we were finally on our way.

To reach snow, you have to climb a considerable distance to the mountains.  Santiago is at about 1700 feet, slightly higher than the highest elevation in Iowa.  The base of our ski resort, La Parva is at 8700 feet.  So we had 7000 feet of climb.  Several other ski resorts are located in that area because it is the lowest possible elevation at which there is enough snow to ski.  If you look closely at the next two pictures you can see where the snow line is.

We reached the resort at about noon and quickly hit the slopes.  Because of the package we got, we were restricted to only a portion of the mountain, but that was just fine because there were about five runs that suited my skill level  just fine (in the past, I've been able to do blacks on mountains--for this adventure we only had access to greens and blues, but that was okay for one day, especially since I haven't skied for ten years).

I generally skied by myself since no one else had very much experience though I had a few adventurous runs with Garv and Lindsay. I was pretty happy with how I did.  I could still ski pretty well, I didn't get too tired, and most importantly, I didn't fall once while skiing (I did fall a couple times just standing around or trying to help Garv up).

At 5:00 pm, the lifts closed down so we packed up the van, wound our way down the mountain, returned the equipment, arrived back at the apartment at 8:00, and devoured water, pizza, and beer.

I really enjoyed this experience...skiing in July, in a different country, and in a different hemisphere.  I hadn't skiied since 2005 in Alaska and it's a shame because it's something that I really like to do.  It seems that I need to get a few thousand miles away before I go skiing when Mt. Kato is only 80 miles away...