The Key to the Perfect Argentinean Ski Adventure? Ditch Your Plans.
This article originally appeared on Ski Mag
The minibus pulled away, and my friend Sarah and I suddenly found ourselves standing with our ski bags in an icy parking lot in Las Lenas, Argentina, all alone. The dozen or so Argentines who'd gotten off the bus with us had simply vanished. Cold wind blasts sent snowflakes whizzing past us, and visibility was only a few hundred feet. Sarah and I looked at each other. I hadn't actually planned beyond our moment of arrival. In hindsight, suddenly, it seemed that may have been an oversight.
The phone call from New York to Whitefish, Montana about a month ago had been brief. "You want to come ski Las Lenas this August?" I asked Sarah. Sarah Light is not only my best friend but conveniently an excellent big mountain skier with, importantly, a flexible schedule.
It was rash: sitting inside, working in New York while the city's pavement melted outside and visible fumes emanated from fetid garbage piles, I'd had it. Life was short, a picture from a ski magazine I'd taped next to my screen was mocking me, and I had a couple thousand seemingly superfluous dollars in my bank account. It must have been hot in Montana too because Sarah didn't even ask any questions. "Sure!"
I'd never been to Argentina, but a friend who'd been in the past told me Lenas was the place to go. Now I had a destination and a ski buddy; I booked a ticket from JFK to Buenos Aires before common sense made an appearance. A month later we stepped onto the jetway at Ezeiza and into the crisp, freezing embrace of winter. A Delta agent was sweetly reminding everyone we'd landed in winter: "Hace frio, hace frio," she said with a smile. It was immediately clear every dollar was going to be worth it.
On a strict budget, we wrangled a cab to Retiro, the main bus terminal, and the cabbie drove maniacally across the city with our ski bags sticking out his sedan windows. (It's more common for skiers to catch a flight from Buenos Aires to Mendoza and then a shuttle up into the mountains, but that was a few hundred bucks we'd rather not spend.) One overnight bus, one minibus, and $30 later, there we were, clueless in a snowstorm in the Andes.
The mountains and ski area were obscured by the storm, but it was obvious Las Lenas is not a town. Below us were the dim outlines of employee housing. A cluster of hotels was visible up the hill. An unstaffed, empty tourism office at one end of the compound offered us no haven. However, enough passionate Argentine skiers lived and worked here, and enough gringo freeride ski bums had already come and gone, so some important precedents had been set.
After a half hour, a security guard wandered by, and I ran after him. A conversation in questionable Spanish followed; the guard said he'd go fetch a guy who ran some rentals, and soon, an old Land Rover Defender came careening out of the whiteout and screeched to a halt. The window rolled down. Did we mind sharing a place with a guy we didn't know? We did not. We threw our bags into the vehicle and climbed in.
The digs consisted of a little living room, kitchenette, bunk beds, tile floors, and an American snowboarder named Jay whose perma-smile was complemented by a closet full of Hawaiian shirts. It was inexpensive, plain, and out of the snow and wind. Glorious. We got lucky, of course: I also learned just about everyone books their digs ahead of time, and Lenas does have a whole variety of excellent hotels and apartments to rent.
The next day, our first on the mountain, dawned clear and cold, with azure skies and a fresh eight inches of sparkling snow. It was also our first glimpse of the terrain. The valley was huge, and vast runs with seemingly tiny lifts made up half of what we could see. But in all directions, stark, treeless rocky peaks were cut into ridges, couloirs, and sub-valleys that we could also see were filled with skiable lines. All the rumors about this skier's promised land were true. Sarah and I were beside ourselves with joy.
It also turned out, given the no-research plan, we'd been unaware this winter was one of the ski area's best... the snow banks were over our heads and the snow had to be groomed or shoveled away from the underparts of the lifts so chairs could pass over. Not ones to look a gift horse in the mouth, we went straight to the Marte--one of the few things we did know to do--which is a legendary chairlift that accesses the top of the mountain.
Marte is the crown jewel of Las Lenas. It's also an old, slow, two-seater which gave us plenty of time to scope out the technical steeps under the chair and to completely freak out as the chair passed under a couple of critical lift towers built into the cliff face at about a 45-degree angle. This did not look okay. It looked like a dangerous and hair-raising mistake of engineering, but it was the way to some of the most epic lift-accessed skiing in the world. It's so good we, like all the other skiers who want to crush that terrain, swallowed our fear of the questionable chairlift and lapped it for weeks.
We soon discovered the top of Marte led to a vast swatch of the backcountry--and also to a series of unforgettable, steep, aesthetic couloirs that aren't technically "in-bounds." Much like in Europe, that designation is limited to the groomed pistes. Yet we skied right to these lines, and the exits dropped us right back on the groomer. Memorable days and descents blurred: steep, no-fall faces, no-fall couloirs, twisty, aesthetic couloirs that were simple, beautiful fun, fluted faces, and wide open sunny lines in this treeless skiing paradise. Ski buddies came and went from all corners of the globe. (Full disclosure: I returned eight times and counting, and it's always been worth it but the snow was never powder like that, or that depth, again).
In a place like Lenas, there was all you needed, and little else. Skiing, food, shelter, and skiing filled everyone's soul to the brim. Cervezas on the patio of the Innsbruck was the daily post-ski routine. The Innsbruck was also the hotspot on the way to the lifts in the morning. Here, you could find ski buddies for the day, breakfast, and caffeine: Innsbruck's huevos revueltos con jamon y queso, and a cafe con leche fueled most days. There was even a routine for when storms were forecast and down days were predicted. The nightlife--which is limited but again, all you need and nothing you don't--delivered, Argentine style, which is to say, amazing, raucous dance parties till dawn.
We could have persevered there in paradise, but, after three and a half weeks, well, we'd run out of lodging options in our budget. So, we left on another bus and alighted in the beautiful city of Mendoza, rented a car, and headed south to Bariloche. Funds were running low, so the auto was small. Therefore, we duct taped six pairs of skis to the roof--we'd picked up a third road trip buddy, and we all had alpine and touring setups--on top of towels and drove south for a few days.
We chose Ruta 40, which, as far as I know, still has huge areas of footpath-esque, unpaved sections. It looks shorter on the map. It is if you could maintain speed without your car rattling apart, which we could not. But going slow was a blessing: We traveled in awe through heartbreakingly beautiful landscapes of snowy volcanoes, glittering rivers, lakes, and hundreds and hundreds of miles of Andean mountain glory.
By the time we reached Cerro Catedral and Bariloche, it was our last week in the country. We bought lift tickets and skied every inch of the mountain. Like many ski areas in the southern regions, it boasts tree runs through forests of mossy, widely spaced trees, alpine bowls, rolling terrain, and plenty of groomers with epic views of the southern Andes and the lake district. It was totally different from Las Lenas in every way: the skiing, the fact that it not only has a base area and a town--a small city, really--nearby, and a true local community of Argentine skiers, ski bums who lived and worked year-round in their community. We had explored both ends of the spectrum for ski bums in Argentina.
But somehow, we were completely enamored of both. It may have been the end of the no-plan planning technique, but we already knew we'd be back any August and September we could make it happen. And it was one hundred percent worth landing back at JFK, satiated, happy, and without a single one of those superfluous dollars left to our names.
Trip Planning
2023-24 Season Dates: July 8-Sept. 20
Getting There: Fly into Buenos Aires, Argentina and book a charter flight to Malargue, then take a bus to Las Lenas. Or, from Santiago, Chile, hop a charter flight to Mendoza, then it’s four-hour bus ride.
Lodging: There are several full-service hotels as well as apartments to rent with full kitchens.
Lift Tickets: From $55 USD
Resort Stats
Elevation: 7,349 feet (base); 11,253 feet (summit)
Vertical Drop: 3,904 feet
Lifts: 14
Average Annual Snowfall: 250 inches
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