Chile

Watch out! The season is already in full swing and before you know it, everything will be slush again! Just don't let the social media feeds tell you that you've already missed so much and stay calm and stoked! It's not too late yet! Let's go!

With the new edition of Endless Winter, Michael Neumann is once again bringing an illustrated book onto the market that will make a powder fan's eyes light up as they read it. And the best thing about it: we're giving away five of the popular copies, so watch out!

Until a few years ago, the area around the Chilean volcano Puyehue was primarily known as a beautiful trekking region. Since Sherpa Cinema and Salomon Freeski TV were there and prominently featured the steep lines in the crater, the number of visitors has also increased during winter. Ever since the strange RedBull event Out of Hell, the Puyehue is no longer an insider tip - but it is still beautiful.

The time had finally come: on Thursday, August 14th, I was finally on the plane from Frankfurt to Santiago de Chile. After 14 hours, Chile greeted me with summer temperatures and sunshine. But wait a minute: I actually came here to ski ...

Fabian Lentsch, up-and-coming freerider from Austria, spent his summer in the winter of South America. In the second part of his rider blog, read about his days in Bariloche with Eric Zeller, Leo Rauch and photographer Jonas Blum and an attempt to climb 6,000 m.

Find out more about Chile's volcanoes here...

Photo trips are hard work. Freerider Gex Rathfelder found this out (once again) on his last trip to Chile. He was on a photo trip in the South American winter with photographer Michael Neumann and gives us an insight into his travel diary here. Seemingly endless travel hardships and poor snow conditions – circumstances from which beautiful images are nevertheless to be created, which will ultimately appear in a book entitled "Endless Winter".

We cross a long plateau and are then as close to the mountain as the truck can take us. Now, with heavy backpacks on our backs, it's an hour and a half up and down 5000 meters through a moraine landscape. During a break, a discussion begins which results in Peter leaving his skis behind, while Brigitte and I decide to take the skis with us to the bitter end, even if we might have to carry them back down the mountain, although it is not yet clear whether and how a descent is possible at all.

Passers-by and travelers at Frankfurt Airport stare at me in confusion. "What's a girl doing so loaded down with a surfboard in the middle of November?" asks an elderly gentleman. I find it difficult to explain to him that the big bag doesn't contain a surfboard, but ski equipment, sleeping bag, sleeping mat and tent, and that I'm on my way to Chile to ski the highest sand mountain in the world...

After everything that could go wrong went wrong, the gods finally smiled on us and dumped 30cms of fresh, breathless powder on Termas de Chillan on Tuesday night. We woke up to a foot of dry snow piled on the bannister on the deck, and immediately the trials and tribulations of the past week were out and the electric energy of a pow day was in. Yeah!!!

To recount the joys of traveling, I got stuck in the Lima airport for 2 days after I thought my flight was at 1.40pm rather than am. You would think I would know to check that by now, but I didn`t. Some things never sink in.

Las Lenas is huge, but it isn't scary. It is supremely aesthetic and inspires you to leave a single, snaking track down each of its many faces. The thing is, it is very possible to do so with the Marte Chair running and incredible peaks within easy boot-packing distance. From the top of these, the mountains stretch on seemingly forever, and so do the possibilities...