Aug 15th – 5th ski day
The forecast was again for sunny skies but warmer than the day before. We’d want to be getting a little higher then to find colder snow. I’d asked the group if they were up from some touring and a little avalanche education and they were game.
We left Las Trancas at 9:15am and was up the top of the Otto chair sometime after 10am. Some of the group had not skinned before so I went through a detailed briefing on how to put skins on, get into touring mode with skis and boots and then pointers on actual skinning itself. Then off we went. The volcano had a nice little vent (probably the biggest vent yet and a bit of a roaring noise too) as we climbed higher.
I found a couple of steeper but short slopes and I demonstrated some open turns, then VAV turns and finally some kick turns. The guys got to practice a few and there was some good improvement. We had a couple of short downhill sections that the guys could practice going downhill (important as we had a long downhill coming up later) and they made easy going of the gentle uphill.
Then after about 25 minutes we hit our downhill. You had some options; you could traverse across a little and have the bindings locked back into ski mode, but most of the group went for it and straight-lined downhill. It was fun to see and I think they enjoyed the excitement of it all.
Then it was another uphill before we made out objective. We stopped to take some group photos and then scouted our line, a big bowl that ran quite a ways, down into the Pirigallo Valley. I had also wanted to dig a pit with the group so they could look at the snowpack and conduct some stability tests.
We found a spot right on the edge of our bowl and headed down a little so we could stay off the steeper part. We marked a 2m wide pit and started digging. The snow was about 145cm’s deep but apart from the top 15cm’s, it was pretty solid all the way down. For a relatively shallow pit, it took quite a lot of effort to dig all the way down to the ground.
About half-way through the digging, two skiers appeared above us (more Australians). There was a decent amount of snow to the side of us and it was steep, I wasn’t keen on them dropping in on top of us so I yelled to them to let them know we were there and pointed for them to go around us. They went to look to the other side but quickly returned and sure enough, they dropped in over the roll-over right on top of us and skied the face together. This was exactly what I was hoping to avoid and pretty unnecessary as they could have easily gone around and below us. Frustrating……
Anyhoow, we managed to dig all the way to the ground (probably the hardest snow I’ve ever had to remove) and then we did looked for different layers with our metal crystal cards and did a couple of hand-hardness tests on the side (observation) walls. The recent storm snow towards the surface was obviously still quite soft (fist tending to 4 fingers) and then it was a whole series of ice-crusts and hard consolidated layers (pencil to knife hardness) with one layer down towards the bottom testing at 1 finger.
We had room for a Shovel Shear Test, 2 x Column Tests and one Extended Column Tests, but after two Column Tests with no result, we abandoned plans for the ECT (we wouldn’t have been able to isolate the block with our knotted paracord and we getting late in the day, it was past 2pm) and decided to get out of there and finally go for a ski.
There was still plenty of room left in our gully and Eric dropped in first. There was a blind rollover so he stopped on the edge of it and spotted the group. I dropped in next and took the furthest right line past Eric and over the roll-over. The snow was still nice and soft and predictable and I enjoyed some fast GS turns in the settled powder. I had 30 nice turns before I had to stop on the top of another roll-over. It was great line. Then the rest of the guys dropped in, one at a time, with enough room for everyone to ski a fresh line.
From there we had a traverse back to the resort, but I decided to go lower and ski in the untouched gully. It was really starting to warm up and in a couple of spots my skis slowed down suddenly and I nearly went over the handlebars. I managed to regain my balance and spotted the guys further down from the safety of a ridge. We crossed back into the resort and went straight to lunch (it was 3pm) at Hotel Alto Nevados. We had lunch and a few well-earned drinks out on the deck and watch a snowboarder get stuck in a very steep gully with rocks in it (a waterfall pretty much), take his board off and then downclimb before losing it on the final rock drop and smashing his butt on the rocks. Ouch! We saw him later and he said he was fine, thankfully so as he could have seriously messed himself up.
By 4:45pm it was time to return to our lodge and enjoy another freshly prepared meal by Chef Manny from Venezuela. Good times!
The Volcan Nuevo had a little toot as we took off for our zone. We could hear a little bit of a roar going this time as well, just to add to the effect!
Skins off and away we go.
One of the more technical parts of the tour is this downhill face. The guys had been able to practice on some smaller downhill features first so nearly everyone got down pretty easily, just gotta remember to take down those climbing aids to avoid face-planting at the bottom....
Our line from the top. Our destination, that big red-roofed building at the bottom (Hotel Alto Nevados).
Nice view of the upper Andes behind the ski area.
Pit time! We dug all the way down to the ground and then did a whole swathe of tests: finding the layers with a crystal card on the sidewalls (observation walls); hand hardness tests; column test (the snow was too hard to cut out a block for an extended column test). The snowpack was pretty solid in general, with most layers being pencil hardness and sandwiched between ice layers. The greatest concern was a lower layer, about 1 finger hardness, but it would take a lot of weight for the energy to reach down that low and cause a failure. If it went, it would go big, but I the likelihood of that happening would be very low. There was still reactivity with the new snow layer, but that would be a small soft slab limited in size to smaller terrain features. The new snow was showing signs of improved bonding as we were not seeing new releases.
The snow was really nice here and we had decent vertical. Definitely worth the effort of skinning up.
Margaret skiing down.
@UGASkiDawg found a snow snake on the way down. He stopped for closer inspection.....
Eric to the rescue.
Dropping in on the next pitch.
Back into the Pirigallo Valley.
Our line from near top to bottom. You can pretty much see our tracks all the way to the top.
- Matt