Powder!

The girls took Thursday off. It was not quite as warm as the past days, and my plan to take Sara down the S-chute back fired when we waited too long and the chute was way too icy to make good turns down. The video made it on to the cutting room floor.

Anna is able to use the fitness studio - the one used for yoga, stretching and zumba, to practice dance in. That's pretty incredible find - it is a nice studio.

Food continues to be excellent. After dinner, we have taught Renee and Anna how to play hearts. They've more or less gotten the hang of it, but the cut throat nature of the game is a little hard to take amongst competitive siblings.

Late night ping pong and a foosball game (I think Sara and Renee's team won) and we went to sleep thinking there would not be much to the weather that was moving in - only a centimeter or two was forecast.

Woke up Friday and there was a little bit of snow on the ground - around an inch and it was snowing very very lightly. No hurry to get out - after all, the forecast wasn't calling for anything special - we had a nice breakfast (I've finally got the right assertiveness while saying "muy firma" to actually have scrambled eggs instead of runny eggs). But the day just got better and better. From "dust on crust" to a bonafide 8 inches or so is my estimate by the time I got tired and came in around 4:15pm (the lifts are open until 5pm to accommodate the late Chilean start that most people get).

However, the visibility was quite low. This was good and bad - a little bit of vertigo and difficulty in finding your footing on the bad side. On the good side, it kept many people away. Well, it was probably also that the road was closed so no one outside of the hotel could ski today. The place was empty, leaving the powder to only a few. Also on the bad side, the visibility kept them from opening up any of the top lifts (the va-et-vients).

The 3pm group lesson call time was interesting. There were about 40-50 instructors out there, and I'd hesitate to guess that maybe around 15 people made it out to the group lessons. They would cheer for each person that was brave enough to come out (visibility, wind, and powder moguls). A large group of instructors were left "free" and would traverse across the front side to get their powder fix.

The weather also meant that the torchlight parade was canceled, but that wasn't a big deal. I got to sit out in pool while snow dumped around me. As of right now, it is still snowing and I believe the road is still closed (the website claims it is open). It is supposed to clear tomorrow, which we hope to mean will be a prime ski day - with the va-et-vient lifts open maybe? Our shuttle doesn't leave until 4pm, so we should be able to get a good day of skiing in.

A dinner of bacon-wrapped filet mignon and we treated ourselves to chocolate fondue (wanted to do this yesterday, but didn't realize you needed a 24 hour reservation on the fondue). Way too much food tonight. We are mostly packed and ready to go in the morning. Early wake up calls set so that we can check out and hopefully make (close to) first lifts. We shall see.

I can't believe the first week is almost over. Portillo has been great. Haven't missed work at all. Its been relaxing and the skiing has been good. The hotel is everything it is lived up to be. I can see why they refer to it as the "cruise ship of skiing".

Most of the guests seem to have young kids - ages 3-7 seem to be predominant. Also interesting is that I've seen quite a few leg braces and other injuries - including witnessing two people taken off the slopes. Given the relatively small number of guests (around 400), I'd say the number of injuries is more than I've noticed at other resorts. Is it the experience level of the skiers? Is it the conditions? Who knows.

No pictures uploaded to the blog today. I took a few, but am too exhausted to "develop" them. We have some days off in Santiago to get some of the video and pictures done.

Looking forward to tomorrow, except the leaving part...