The wind picked up during the night so the first couple of runs of the day were a little wind packed.
Magnus doing the classic “did I hit a rock?” check.
We soon found a face that looked good with soft snow, a quick 30 minutes hike up and off we go!
We like leaving our stamp in the snow, as you can see, there where still plenty of mountain to rip up!
After lunch we though that this was a good peak to hike.
We took the lift as high up as we could get, signed off our lives on a document and off we went to the words of “Loco gringos” echoing in our heads. It is always comforting when you walk by one of these signs:
As always, we are well prepared with plenty of water and snacks for the hike… or not. But we made it to the top, the hike itself was not so hard, but the altitude and the thin air make me feel like I have a lung capacity of a 70 year old that’s been smoking all her life. We made it to the top, the view was stunning, as usual with snow covered mountains!
The Andes
Magnus was the first one to click in the skis and throw himself out.
Johan was next.
And then Geico
He made a small tumble, but was soon back on his feet.
After this amazing run it was time to call it a day, we had planned to head down south to a different mountain to ski on tomorrow. We only had one last long run in the groomed tracks to get down to the car. My legs were so tired I had to make plenty of stops, when your legs are tired, there are two ways to get down: you either go super slow, making many 180 turns, or you just keep your head up and make a straight line down the mountain without doing any turns. The later is only recommended if you know the mountain well, or if it is fairly empty so you don’t have to be a responsible skier and be aware of co-skiers. I did a combination of both. During one of my many stops, Magnus came up me to asking “Man, can you feel the burn in your thighs?” -I was to tired to even come down in position to get the burns in my thighs! But I made it down safe and in one piece.We were 4 people with luggage and equipment in one small SUV, it was a little tricky to fit everything in.
But since we are the Tetris generation, we managed to squeeze everything in and still have room for 4 people.
Or 3.5 at least. We only had an 8 or so hours trip ahead of us, so it didn’t matter if one of us only could get one cheek down, as long as the driver was comfortable!
Good Bye Las Lenas, you were awesome to us!
We had a fairly long trip ahead of us. We had planned according to the maps, that it would take us approximately 9 hours to get down to San Martin from Las Lenas on Ruta 40. If we were lucky enough, we would get there before midnight, and if anything came up along the way, we would only be a couple of hours away and we could to the last leg tomorrow morning and still have plenty of time to ski the next day. But who knew that Ruta 40, a decent size highway in Argentina only had one lane? Once you got behind a truck, you had to stay there for a while before you got a chance to pass.
Or that a little later, the road would turn into a dirt road that was so bumpy you thought the car would shake apart if you went faster than 40km/h?
So, it took us a little longer than planned, I managed to fall asleep in the back seat and woke up in a town in the middle of nowhere where we decided to stay over the night. I have no idea where.