Bariloche - a 2fer.

Part 1 - Matt
200 Centimeters of Fun (....no that's the not the name of Ron Jeremy's next movie)

As we pulled into the Bariloche bus station, a light snow was falling. Fantastic news! We are here to snowboard and snow is good! Well...mostly but not initially. Apparently Cerro Catedral the ski resort here doesn't handle snow well. And Catedral received A LOT of it. For 72 straight hours, there was a mix of snow, sleet, and rain falling in the city of Bariloche. What that meant was that there was 72 hours of snow at the mountain which is located 20 kilometers and about 2000 vertical feet above the city. With this much snow, Catedral was essentially closed for the first 3 days we were in Bariloche. Staying in a hostel filled with a large contingent of Australians, and Irish with a smattering of Israelis and Americans all there for a unified purpose: ski or snowboard. The next most popular unifying activity rears its head pretty quickly. Let's just say for a few days there was abundance of board games, card games, chess etc but with each player holding not only their own cards but their own liter(s) of Quilmes or Stella. We also were lucky to arrive on the night of hostel's weekly asado night. As much as it feels a little boring to sit in a random town in Argentina and wait for a mountain to open in the days of a warm NYC summer, endless meat and beer makes time go quickly.

So finally after a few days we get to the mountain. Holy crap was there a lot of snow. 200 Centimeters worth. 200 centimeters, or like 80 inches, or 7 FEET at the top is a ton ton ton. Basically driving up on the first day it looked like a snow bomb exploded in the area. We took the public bus each way after the first trip, but sharing a cab with a local Argentinian mother and son the first day
they commented that it was the most snow they have ever seen on the mountain.

With rented equipment (boo!) we ended up going snowboarding 4 of the next 5 days with the day off spent resting my weary neck, back, hips and legs. Ok, so the views are f8cking ridiculous. There's no other way to describe it. Cerro Catedral is in the Southern Andes mountains and is bordered by the large lake Nahuel Huapi and other mountains. The view from the top is so absurd nearly everyone who reaches the top for the first time, unhooks their skis or board and spends 15 minutes up to taking pictures. Ok I’ll save the unwitty banter for future writings, but share some of the amazing views from this area





Yes you can choose a 5 star restaurant, but I think you'd be hard pressed to find one with this view:

Part 2 - Annie
Off-Piste Shenanigans

One of the cooler things about Cerro Catedral, other than the ridiculous views, is the variety of terrain there is to ride on. There are so many different areas to the resort that after 4 days, we still didnt feel like we saw the whole place. After the storm that came through, there was so much snow that the resort staff needed days and days to dig out all the lifts. Some were never opened by the time we left Bariloche which meant parts of the mountain were nearly impossible to get to. As we were dedicated to getting the most out of our 4 days, we decided to unstrap and hike it to the top of the runs left abandoned by some closed lifts.
We took our place in line hiking along a very narrow ridge that lined the top of a steep bowl, which was made of a few slopes with mixed levels from double black diamonds down to blues. By the time we made it about 1/4 of the way across the ridge, people were stopping to strap into there boards and skis and begin the descent down 1200 feet of the ungroomed powdery bowl. We decided to do the same, but as soon as we were sitting in the snow and ready to go, we realized we had stopped at the top of a like a triple black.

Since the powder was so deep, we decided just to scoot down a little on our butts until we reached a more managedable area. After a while, the steepness evened out into *only* a black diamond and I decided to get up and give myself a chance. With the sweeping views of the lake and the Patagonian Andes in front of me, my not-terrible-but-could-have-been-better rental board on my feet, and the Hartford Tweezer playing in my helmet, I started making some turns through deepest powder on the steepest slope Ive ever traversed.

Im not sure if it was the idea that the only access point for this run was a long strenuous hike, whether it was the challenge of the deep powder, or whether I was just happy to be snowboarding in Argentina, but I think I had possibly the best run of all my snowboarding years. For those who snowboard or ski know, that when you push yourself to do something new or something that seems slightly impossible, and you actually do it, it feels like youve discovered it all over again.
I wished we had had time to do the hike again and ride through the deep snow again, but just having done it once makes me positive that enduring the cold weather to come here for the snow was worth every moment of cold toes.