Snow, winds and more winds

Our second night in Esquel we went to bed to rain and woke up unexpectedly at 6 am with men yelling and someone pounding on our door and trying the handle. We thought we were being robbed and played dead and when things seemed quiet I went downstairs. The landlady said it was just the police, bored on a Sunday morning and stirring up trouble.





The rain ended and we took the bus up to La Hoya, set spectacularly in a crinkle in the mountains and powdery with 8 inches new. The snow ended by midmorning and the skies cleared ... and then the winds really started to blow. We´ve seen our share of strong winds here in Patagonia, but this was an exceptional event. The winds and fresh snow created a howling ground blizzard, scraping some trails clear to rock and creating massive drifts. One by one the lifts shut down until only a quad and two rope tows were left. Sad. La Hoya seemed a perfect blend of off-the-map solitude and huge bowls, not to mention modern lifts and comfortable lodges.

We took an all day bus to Neuquen, retracing our route from Bariloche along the way. Back over the windswept pass with the bus crashing through drifts, and back over the densely treed pass where we had to put on chains and crawl past 18 wheelers sliding into ditches. Neuquen was out of our way but a transit hub. We took a taxi into town and spent the night before coming back at 4 am for another bus.

The busses in Argentina are rolling mobile homes, double deckers, with reclining seats, massive windows, movies, music, meal service and coffee. We had seats up front at the top, with massive picture views of the rolling desert. A long Patagonia dawn gradually revealed gauchos on horseback and wide river canyons and snowy mountains in the distance. Closer in the canyon closed and great sandsone spires rose alongside the road, giving way to snow and avalanche chutes and finally the summit, a shimmering kidneyshaped lake, the village of Caviahue and the road ending in a snowdrift.

We checked into the first cheap hotel we found and I slapped on my skins and started skinning practically from the front door. I went up a hill behind down dotted with araucania trees and wind drifts. This being Patagonia, I was soon followed by a happy scrappy dog. Little in the way of turns, but a fantastic long Patagonian twilight view over the lake.

Winds howled during the night packing the streets with drifts. We took a taxi the one mile to the ski area. Caviahue is a smallish resort ... two doubles from the base climb to a peaklet, with a poma and rope below. A poma and double descend to a second area, where a quad and a tbar climb sidebyside to a high point on the main ridge leading to the sprawling Volcan Copahue. A very nice day on packed powder, marred only by flat light. Homemade pasta and pollo milanesa (chicken fried chicken) for dinner.

Woke up to more winds, cancelling today´s plans to climb the volcano. Back in Neuquen now, headed to Mendoza on the night bus.