Bus trip from El Calafate to Esquel…. was long. 23.5 hours in total. After a discussion on whether to walk or cab it to our hostel we decided to walk. Bad decision!! The hostel was miles away and to top it off when we got there the hostel was crap. Worst one yet. Not particularly clean and pretty dingey. Was not happy with my choice of hostel.. The guys running it were quite nice though. But the silver lining was snowboarding on powder tomorrow! We hoped….
So we got picked up by our transport at 9:15 (45 minutes late, but hey) and by the time we picked up others and got up the mountain it was nearly 10. The mountain is only 14km’s from town. And when we got there it was puking snow!!! Flakes the size of your head!! So we were stoked to get some pow shots to the face asap!! It was a great day. Snow was fantastic, a good foot, twice as much on some nicer untouched runs, visibility not so great but was good fun. Had to endure the ole T-bar and pomer for the good tracks but was worth the pain. The t-bar was really hard. Quite steep in places which caused substantial pain to the hamstring but was worth the effort. For the record i think i took heaps more pain than Flick because she “didn’t think it was too bad”. Yeah i know i should.
Towards the end of the day we decided to ski an area we hadn’t been but at this stage the visibility was particularly bad. In front of us were two chutes, one long and a little carved out, and a shorter untouched one. Thinking this would be great i said to Flick come this way, heading towards the smaller chute. Seconds later i was flying, or falling. The chute had been left for a reason. About a metre and a bit drop was the reason. Lucky Flick didn’t follow because i was sprawled out on the snow below. Hurt my shoulder a little but hoping nothing too serious. Seems to be getting better already.
Our transfer back down was at 5 so about 4″30 we headed down to the car park. Windy and snowing and freezing, our transfer was about an hour late!! Seems that”s the way they roll. Lucky we could hide in the confiteria…
That night we booked another transfer to the mountain for the next day. We rose early and a little tired to have breakfast and be ready to leave by just before 9. Ok so it wasn’t that early but i have had my fair share of early mornings and the sun doesn’t even rise until about 8:30. Get off my back!! Anyway we waited and waited a little longer. The guy from the hostel got back from walking his dog and looked at me puzzled. He walked inside and came out a minute later and told me the mountain was closed!! Transfer companies are good here!! Anyway off to the national park tomorrow and hopefully back to La Hoya on Wednesday for some more pow pow. Stay tuned folks. By the way we aren’t getting enough traffic to the blog to attract advertising so we are going to start charging you to read it. Sorry we have to pay for this somehow. Nothing is free you know. Look i won’t argue with you over this!! Later… Catch you on the flip side (I don’t know what that means)!
Timeframe: Friday 2nd – Monday 5th August
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