The second Classic Shortie trip was awesome! Although skiing at La Parva and Valle Nevado wasn’t initially anything to “write home about” (I guess that is an excuse for not blogging), our arrival into the Las Trancas valley was marked by numerous text messages from my Chilleno freeride buddies saying “Vente! Esta nevando!” (Translation: Get over here! It’s dumping!). But as usual, the Miguel Torres winery that we stop at for lunch on our way to Chillán instigated a fairly debaucherous yet classy drive south on the Panamerican highway.

lunch at the Miguel Torres Winery

keepin' it classy: wine in paper cups. but it's good wine!

And dump it did! The storm left over 4 meters of snow in some places (although only 2nd to the 7 meter storm in July). Here is a picture of them trying to dig the chairlift out on August 18
But before they were digging out the lift, we were shredding the storm pow. One of the reasons why Nevados de Chillan is so sick compared to anywhere else in Chile is because they have tree skiing! Al the other areas (for the most part) don’t usually have accessible trees within the area and trying to ski in a storm on a volcano is like being dropped into a glass of milk. You can’t see 4 inches in front of your face. Here is an edit, actually of me and my Chilean friends skiing in the “Bosque Darkside” at Nevados de Chillan in late July. It’s got a short piece of me skiing, basically just shredding too fast for the go-pro follow cam edit! But the video makes me happy, these guys are so rad! I’m at minute 6. Nothing too special…but my parents might like it.

During the storm the CASA Tours crew headed out to the MI Lodge to have dinner. We used their 4xr trucks as transfers but there wasn’t enough space for everyone inside. I was stoked to be in the back with Travis (my guiding partner) enjoying some pre-dinner faceshots after a day of storm riding!
 After the Classic Shortie trip was over (short video edit to come, err, shortly), I stuck around to shred the rest of the pow. Unfortunately on Saturday August 20th, the PINCHE PUELCHE came…that means that everything went a little further than wind BUFFED…This is my friend and professional photographer Brian Stevenson who came with me on a ski tour yesterday after they opened up the mountain (it was closed due to super high winds (aka pinche puelche) on Saturday).
 We toured out to Valle Hermoso, a beautiful area just next to the area. No tracks, but plenty of wind affected terrain. None the less we managed to make it look like we were shredding pow! The snow kicked up a bunch of spray. Brian and I shot photos for the day, but here is one I took of him.
 Have to give this guy props (below) his one-piece and the old-school CASE Logic bag is so classic! You always see some good ski style down here.