Turns out embedding worked! https://vimeo.com/290122490
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.
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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.
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It had been a particularly terrible season in the Central Andes. People in the northern hemisphere complain about a 300 inch year. It snowed 70 inches in the 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.
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Our plan was to use the ski resort to make access easier. Camping behind the ski resort is not encouraged by the administration, so stealth was essential. Easier said than done, we were easily spotted by the Gendarmes when leaving the resort. Despite having ice axes strapped to the outside of our backpacks, they believed our claims of a mellow week hanging out in the termas, and finally allowed us to exit the resort for an ‘Argentine Alpine Start’ at 1130AM. We skied off the back of the resort, skinned up the ridge out back, and down into our approach valley where we slogged until nightfall to reach an acceptable place to call camp.
We awoke the next morning excited to be exploring a new zone. Rather than dry our boots from the previous days approach, we went for the biggest, most obvious line visible from camp. Why not? The line had two significant pitches with great snow in both: powder on the upper pitch seamlessly transitioning to corn on the lower. We called the line ‘Japi Hour’, in honor of its two for one policy. Given probably none of this area had been skied before, we tried to come up with cheeky names for what we skied this week.
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Day two consisted of slightly more bold objectives. A hidden southwest couloir that was tucked out of view from camp, and an obvious face off of ‘Big Rock Candy Mountain’. The hidden couloir was a personal highlight. Despite having never laid eyes on it, the imposing rock wall above camp looked like there had to be something hidden in there. It was an interesting moment involving a bit of faith that paid off. The hidden line on ‘Aguja Argentina’ bolstered our confidence that things would simply work. We next moved to the jumbled labyrinth of hanging snowfields, cliffs, and couloirs, which we named ‘Big Rock Candy Mountain’. It was a sluffy run but overall really fun.
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