Matancillas | In search of couloirs in the Central Andes

Winter camping has always been intimidating for me. The thought of keeping you and your gear warm and dry enough to function while in the cold and snow can be daunting. A friend always said, "winter camping is an art". Despite being friends, I thought he was either insane or a liar.

On the other hand, winter camping has such incredible benefits. You have all the joys of living simply with close (or soon to be close) friends. On top of that, you get to go skiing. How could it get better? When you think of all the positives, you start to forget how much it sucks using numb fingers to jam numb toes into moist ski boots, eat instant food for all your meals, or carry a heavy backpack for long enough to bruise your hips...right? At least I (sometimes) do.

It had been a particularly terrible season in the Central Andes. People at home in Jackson complain about a season with less than 8 meters of total snow fall. It snowed less than 2 meters in the Las Leñas valley this year. So when friends Alejo Sanchez and Lee Lyon suggested a winter camping mission to some high, far, south facing lines, the choice was obvious. There was no snow left in the valley. It didn't matter if the snow we were walking towards would be good or not, it was the last place we could go skiing.

Starting to feel the rhythm on day three, we went for a complex zone observed from 'Japi Hour' on the first day. Like many things that are not what they seem, we got a little lost in the maze of couloirs on the way up. It turned out that one couloir was three braided together. We momentarily lamented not being able to downclimb the cliff to get to our intended line, but where we were proved to be pretty sweet too. We called the zone 'A Picture of Dorian's Brain', in honor of a friend who had been with us last time out in this area. Don't worry, he's not dead, just skateboarding right now.

After a punky exit/downclimb from the 'Dorian's Brain', we opted to walk further up the adjacent valley to see if there was any ski potential towards Cerro Matancillas for the following day. Not finding anything skiable, we treated ourselves to a cruisy 900m corn run back to camp. This was the first bit of straightforward skiing we had done on the trip, and it felt nice to turn the brain off and simply link some turns.

The following day dawned with intermittent clouds and we enjoyed some extra rest. We opted to walk into a different valley to explore a large rock tower. Thinking of our protectors back at the resort, we called it 'Cerro Gendarme'. We skinned to the top of our line for the first time of the trip. It's easy to forget how easy skinning is when you have to bootpack everything. Even in difficult snow with some exposed switchbacks, the track felt cruisy. We skied an angular, sheltered line with recycled powder on it down to the firmer carton in the valley below, then pleasant corn turns all the way back to camp.

Feeling refreshed from the 'rest day', we skied a line we had all looked at on the walk in, and wanted to call the embudo (funnel). Though the turns were nice on the face, things got rough at the choke. One had to stay clear while sluff moved past, then carefully pick their way through knee high sastrugi and rock solid carton through the runout. We opted for a more appropriate name: 'Inodoro' (toilet). The lower section of the 'Inodoro' was definitively the worst snow of the trip.

We had been watching the snow melt both around camp and down valley, and knew the walk out would not be very pleasant. We awoke early to give ourselves as much time as possible with snow still frozen to ease the return.

Once we got cell service, we had hoped to call for a ride back to town, but we pushed rations an extra day and were unsure what to expect. Nobody was answering their phone, so we continued walking, expecting to go the full six miles back to town. However, Alejo's brother had thought ahead, and left a car for us just around the next switchback.

We were back at the apartment an hour later. Dirty, tired, happy. We devoured cheesy eggs and promptly opened a well-earned beer.

Usually I hate every second of winter camping and accept it for what it is. I've been constantly tinkering my systems in hope of finding something that starts to work better. Balancing simplicity and comfort is a huge challenge when you have to carry everything.

Maybe we got lucky. Maybe we're getting better. I'd like to think the latter than the former. Whatever we did, we did pretty well this time around.

Here's the whole thing in moving pictures:

Cerro Mantequillas from Leland Lyon on Vimeo.