The drive up to Valle Nevado seemed even more hair raising than the drive up to Portillo. Valle Nevado may be closer, but the road was something else. Valle Nevado likes to brag about how they just redid their road, but this is only the last section - after the split to go to either El Colorado/La Parva or to Valle Nevado. The first 40 or so hairpin turns before this (and countless of other "almost-hairpin" turns that don't get numbered) are on a fairly narrow road. All of us felt a little bit of motion sickness. Its quite amazing that there aren't more accidents. Uphill traffic gets "right of way" and there are some curves where really only one vehicle can be on it at once, and I don't know how you can see the vehicles coming the other way!!!
After the split, the next 20 hairpin turns are much wider but still just as steep. We arrived to the Hotel Puerta Del Sol a little worse for the wear, but all in one piece. Our room on the fifth floor was ready, and the view outside the balcony was incredible - overlooking both the slopes and the pool
We had been spoiled in Portillo. The rooms in Puerta Del Sol were nice, and maybe slightly larger. However, we had had two separate rooms in Portillo (thusly two bathrooms), and the "double-double" was only one bathroom with a shower that would spray all over if you weren't very very very careful! The restaurants were also nice, but something about the Portillo dining room with the service there was good.
They have three restaurants and we tried them all:
Mirador: buffet style with a cook for meat, and a pasta bar (where they would make whatever option you wanted). This was a hit with the girls!!! It was such a nice buffet, that near the end, we noticed one family video taping themselves go through the buffet :-)
Don Giovanni (italian). This was good, after they settled the issue where they lost ours (and at least two other) reservations. They claimed they couldn't seat us, but found a table.
La Fourchette (french). The adults liked this. The kids, not so much.
Lunch (which wasn't included in the Valle Nevado package), was quite expensive. I mean, normally ski lunches are expensive, but this was a step up. A coke for $5 is a little much for instance.
Despite the fact that Valle Nevado had receiver about three feet of snow within the last week or so, they were now dry and needing snow badly. The winds at Valle Nevado can be quite spectacular - even to the point where T-bars and Poma lifts had to stop to wait for the winds to subside. It is not very much fun to be stuck on a Poma lift while hurricane force winds sweeping across perpendicular to you. Skiing off the groomed trails was not very good, but there were plenty of groomed options, and the snow there was pretty good.
A few random comments about Valle Nevado
- Weekend crowds… Wow! The place gets way more day visitors, of course, than Portillo - being closer to Santiago. Lots of beginners. Lots of people that have given up and are walking down. Some spectacular crashes.
- Slow lifts. While Portillo has no high speed lifts, and Valle Nevado has one (Andes Express), the other lifts at Valle Nevado are really slow. Mirador was long and deathly slow. They had a "new" double (bought used of course) on the backside which we dubbed the slowest lift in the world. Smuggs has a kids double that they run at half-speed ("Mogul Mouse lift") and we decided that this lift was slower than Mogul Mouse! The line up for this lift could reach 45 minutes at peak times because it was the most obvious route out of the "backside".
- Winds. Already mentioned…. This wasn't usually a problem. Just mostly at the end of the day.
We were blessed with mostly sunny days. When it fogged up one day, the place is pretty un-skiable.
We quickly learned that:
- The fastest way to get to mid-mountain was the gondola even though it was built with the intention mostly for day visitors to get from the parking lot
- The catwalk back from the backside is much better than the double, especially when there is any line at all. We measured 15 seconds between every chair and lots and lots of stoppages for people that fall off at the top (not a very good unloading).
On the last day, we managed to demo some Burton boards. We should have planned better. They were open Thursday - Sunday, but I didn't figure out that the demo was free until too late the first weekend. The girls really enjoyed them, although Anna was not a fan of the board with "rocker" and preferred a flatter board. It was a nice bonus.
Since we were there on a seven day stay, we got a free massage (yay!), and a day pass to both La Parva and El Colorado.
La Parva:
We hit this on Monday, which in retrospect was probably the best day of all. The slopes were very uncrowded (a nice change from the Valle Nevado weekend crowds that we had just experienced), snow was good (even did some off-piste with Renee). There were also some good jumps set up on the sides of the trail and we did some photo sessions.
Lunch at La Parva (3100 restaurant) was really good.
As we found out later in the day, the ticket system at La Parva was the normal ticket that we are all used to, but we had to turn in our vouchers for one at the bottom lifts. Unfortunately (fortunately?), we never made it there. When we skied on to their main quad that didn't have a lift ticket sales because it wasn't all the way at the bottom, they would be fine with us just showing the voucher so we thought that this was the same as a day ticket. None of the upper mountain lifts checked a ticket. On our very last lift ride from mid-mountain, the employee explained that we had to go all the way down to the base to exchange for a "real" ticket. But he let us on in order to ride up to make this exchange. We still have the vouchers…
El Colorado:
An interesting mountain - unlike anything I've ever been on. The mountain looks like it was an old volcano (probably was), and from the top you have 360 degree views. But there is a side that is COMPLETELY snow-less. The runs tend to be indistinguishable from each other because you are skiing on a cone. Everything is the same steepness.
The passes are RFID, which we liked. No vouchers to turn in! As soon as you entered the El Colorado system, it debited the card for our day.
Except for the front side which have a few (slow) doubles and triples, everything is a T-bar. We rode what I think must be the longest and sustained-steepest T-bar I've ever seen on the back side. It gave quite the bruise to Sara...
A good snowboard park with some fun rails and boxes. We made the mistake of trying to enter it from the top (which was closed), and the ski patrol blew a whistle to make us stop. This was not the only time they used a whistle - at one point on a catwalk right above a T-bar, we made the "mistake" of stopping for a few minutes and we were "whistled" to move along…
We stopped for lunch at the "Mirador" restaurant that is mid-mountain in El Colorado (not to be mistaken with the Mirador restaurant in Valle Nevado's hotel). I ordered a kabob, and 30 minutes later (I kid you not), it was delivered to me!!!
Now back to Valle Nevado comments…
The sunsets around Valle Nevado are incredible. I was told that everything turns a shade of violet and I barely believed it, but it is true. Pictures probably don't do it justice.
We enjoyed the daily stretching class, at least except for the time that the instructor played a reggae version of the Dark Side of the Moon album (by a group named "Easy Stars All Stars" - I had to ask). There are songs that should not be covered reggae style, and this includes every single song on that album. The stretching instructor seemed to pick on our family a bit - for instance he believed that I was far more flexible than I really am! Anna also liked that she could use the room where they held yoga/stretching in for her dancing.
We made some good friends with other visitors there. Far more Americans than when we were at Portillo (July is mostly Chileans at Portillo, and Americans usually come in August).
Since I didn't do a very good job at imbedding pictures in this blog, I'll just summarize the pictures now…
View from our balcony:
On the slopes of Valle Nevado
A glacier on El Plomo mountain
In the "slowest lift in the world" lift line
After our short hike to La Parva (we chose the wrong way to get there). Amazing that they are still smiling!
Me on the jump in La Parva:
Anna choosing not to jump:
Renee on the jump in La Parva (the shot of my vacation - do I get advertising dollars from K2?)
Enjoying the sun at La Parva 3100 restaurant
Bar at 3100 restaurant
Family shot at 3100 restaurant
The sandwich guy called over for me to take his picture. I like how it turned out:
Paragliding at La Parva (not us of course)
Valle Nevado sunsets:
The helicopter at Valle Nevado:
A view of the switchbacks:
Family portrait on the slopes of El Colorado (taken by auto-timer on my camera)
A view (from El Colorado) of the back country runs at La Parva… "The Face" is to the left, the diagonal slash is the famous "La Chiminea" run, and then "McConkey" is the area just to the right of that.
A skier at the top of an El Colorado T-bar.
No comments:
Post a Comment