Skiing in Chile can be a great adventure. More than you imagine ... In this report I give you some tips to enjoy more of your stay at the stations of Los Tres Valles Chilenos

As spring advances here, on the other side of the world, in the Chilean Andes, the first flakes are already falling in some of its seasons.

Skiing in Chile
Chile, which in its continental zone in South America is trapped between the Pacific Ocean and the Andes, from the Atacama desert to the Chilean Patagonia, has a varied and very different supply of snow and tourism, distributed throughout its 5,000 kilometers in length, from north to south. In its metropolitan area, just a few kilometers from its capital, Santiago, there are three ski resorts with a great offer of quality snow. They are El Colorado / Farellones (40 km of slopes), La Parva (38 km of slopes), and Valle Nevado (37 km of slopes and 9,200 ha of skiable surface).


Skiing in Chile

Among the three, they make up the largest ski area in South America. Overcoming the three thousand meters of altitude, which will take you to a top of 3,670 m in the case of Valle Nevado (9,200 ha of skiable surface), on top of "three points" in the area called Valle del Inca (3,600 m) where the views to the hill "El Plomo" (5,430 m) where, in 1954, the mummy of an Inca child was found, guarded on the right by the hill "Bismarck" (4,650 m) and on the left, the hill of "La Parva" "(4,047 m) are impressive.

During my trip there, I thought that being located at such altitudes, (in the three seasons, you ski between 2,300 from Farellones to 3,600 meters in Valle Nevado) the weather conditions would be quite extreme; the truth is that I was worried and that being a high plateau (it is one of the highest areas in the middle of the Andes) the wind was going to be a problem and serious.  

Skiing in Chile

However, my surprise was that throughout the winter (usually start the season in mid or late June to end at the end of September), the weather is dry and sunny, with occasional rainfall that lasted only two or three days and left "Paquetones" of between 50 cm and 1 meter of dry and cold snow that made our delights; the wind was conspicuous by its absence, because the currents ran from south to north because of the protective barrier of the same mountain range of the Andes that split the South American continent in two. A joy.

The temperatures, until the end of August, although cold, were never extreme, and ranged between the negative 5/7 degrees to the 2/3 positives. The mantle of snow thanked him greatly and I was able to enjoy many days of extraordinary powder snow that barely transformed from one day to the next. For me, one of the best reasons to travel there.


Skiing in Chile

Of course ... too nice to be true. The problem of skiing in Chile (I extend it to almost all its stations) is that, if you do not know it, and do not use the tricks that "natives" or connoisseurs use, skiing in Chile can be very expensive and all, extremely cumbersome and chaotic for the European skier, accustomed to our territory, Europe, everything is facilities and enjoys a wide variety of offer and an excellent price/quality ratio.