LivingInPatagonia.com

The Truth of Skiing at the Catedral Ski Area

Written by Shanie

Absolutely gorgeous day today.  The sun was out in all its splendor.  Small puffs of clouds slowly danced across the azure sky.

We decided to go skiing.  The Santa Rosa (the largest storm to visit each year, usually around early September) visited last week.  She started out with a glorious six feet of beautiful snow but then rained like cats and dogs.  The temperatures stayed above freezing for multiple days. The walls came tumbling down from the new snow, rain and warm temps.  There were avalanches on most aspects.  The backcountry was a rain runneled mess mixed with deep, dirty avalanche debris.  But the ski area stayed pretty smooth.

Catedral put in a new lift, Nubes, that accesses some of the best terrain offered at the ski area.  The lift is in a good location, in that you can access the entire mountain without having to sit on a chair for an hour.  The problem is, is that the Nubes chair requires the same thing out of the skier as the Argentine country requires from its people.  Paciencia. Patience.  A requirement for living here and that extends to the chairlifts as well.

We had yet to ski Nubes because of a continual closure of the chair and I have to admit that I was a bit disheartened with the skiing thus far.  It seemed that the ski area was disjointed with flat groomers (great for cross country skiing but this is a downhill resort) and the two areas of more interesting skiing only being accessed by twenty minute hikes.  That twenty minutes of hiking turns into about 700 vertical of 30 degree slopes.  Not exactly the kind of skiing that made my adrenaline pump after Las Leñas, Alaska, Squaw Valley and Europe.

But today Nubes was open!  It was such a nice surprise.  Not only were we being given a splendid, sunny, paradise-like day in Patagonia but Catedral had decided to open the famous Nubes.

I am now not feeling so disheartened or pent-up as I did.  The Nubes chair makes the skiing at Catedral make a lot more sense.  The runs connect; the hour of chair time plus a hike is gone.  We did fast, smooth corn laps through the 32ish degree rock laced slopes under the chair.

I know that Catedral is smaller, not quite as steep and the land of the Brazilian tourist but I have a little more hope now.  My Patagonian home has some decent terrain.  My heart and soul feel lighter knowing that.