Ski Portillo's Slopes: What to Expect 

Thanks so much! It means a lot. The mountains and resorts in latam are so beautiful and I always love coming here. Winter sports should be so much bigger here than they are. I definitely want to visit Nevados de Chillán next. But it will have to wait until next year!

Totally agree - it's a gamble in South America, particularly given the price at a resort like Portillo. They were in a heat wave like you said until this week. About 5 feet of snow expected. If you arrive this Saturday in Portillo, it's totally worth the price. But you would have no way of knowing in advance when booking. You would think the safest bet is the middle of the season, which this year would have been wrong. As far as Europe, I've gone for a month the past two years and the snow has been below average. I've been there a total of 42 days over 2 years with 38.5 days of pure sun and no new snow. Still, to your point, all of the resorts were fully open even if the snow wasn't ideal. Portillo this year wasn't fully open until this week at the earliest.

@@SkiBoyNY. yeah, talk about bad luck, it’s me. The next day my snowboard trip ended, Valle Nevado got half a meter of snow and they’re being dumped with snow since then. With the forecast for this week, they probably going to be able to sustain the season till the beginning of October. My next trip is going to be to the French Alps, I would appreciate if you make a video about European ski resorts :D About South America, Chapelco, Bariloche and Nevados de Chillan seems to not suffer with low snowfall at least in the middle of the season. I’d say they’re the safest bets for anyone looking to Andes skiing. But all the other places are amazing if you have enough snow. The landscapes on Chile are out of this world. Laguna del Inca in Portillo probably makes the best view while skiing in the entire world.

Looks like even if you had been at Portillo or Valle Nevado this past week, you wouldn't have been able to ski or board much because the lifts were closed almost every day due to wind. And there was no coming or going to Portillo because the road to Santiago and Mendoza was closed the whole time. Totally agree about the view of Laguna del Inca probably being the best view in the world. I couldn't stop looking at it the entire week! Will be posting videos about Zermatt, Andermatt and Les 3 Vallees in the next couple months, but French resorts will have to wait until I visit them this year! @@mfcoelho4

@@mfcoelho4 if you go to Europe, go to St Anton complex... Whats the Portillo's prices compared to Europe? i mean accomodation/ski lift prices and food?

I haven't been even semi-consistent! You guys are smarter than me, realizing thwart dailies are impossible, haha!

@@SkiBoyNY. find a happy medium my dude 🤙

Hope you caught the tail end of the storms that are hitting now! The snow was below average until just a few days ago. Would be great if you at least got some fresh pow.

Lost a few days of skiing due the storm, but was well worth it for a few fresh pow days ;).

@@Ice_Coast_Ski Awesome! Did you hit Lake Run in the powder? And did the Juncalillo lift open?

Thanks so much! I use the Insta360 X3 attached to the Insta360 invisible selfie stick, which I then attach to my helmet. It make it a bit harder to ski because the selfie stick and camera pull your head down in whatever direction they're attached to the helmet, and then the faster you go, there can also be wind drag. But if you put up with it, it can give you a great POV.

Totally helped being from the east coast. This week Portillo is getting 5 feet of snow, so west coast skiers and boarders would have a field day!

​@@SkiBoyNY. sad that you didn't go now :( las lenas got 11 feet.

Wow, I want to head to Las Lenas too. Looks like this was the year to be there!@@luckmc2874

Yes, it's a great resort. But expensive. During the high season, a hotel room can cost USD $1000 per night. A bed in the Octagon Lodge is much less, but it is a shared space. In the low season, the prices come down considerably. But those prices include all of your meals and lift tickets.

@@SkiBoyNY. wow!!!! i guess i ll stick to Austrian Alps then ;) thanx!

If they're both fully open, I'd say Portillo. Lake Run and La Garuanta are great black slopes that are as good as any difficult terrain at Valle Nevado, if not better because of their views. Although they don't have a lot of vertical, the lines off of the Condor, Roca Jack, El Caracara and Las Viscachas lifts add up to be probably more advanced terrain overall than Valle Nevado has. Particularly if you traverse to the skier's right of El Caracara. A lot of options there. Though many of them require the Juncalillo chairlift to be open, which is an issue if there's not enough snow. There's also a crazy narrow line under the Plateau lift among the rock uphill from La Garuanta. It was closed when I was there, but if open, that may be the best advanced slope at both resorts because it's steep, very narrow at points and almost like a couloir. Valle Nevado is larger than Portillo, but has more intermediate and advanced intermediate terrain. Hope that helps!

Thanks! Keep doing this great videos in south america! They are for sure one of my top 3 favorites and is helping me a lot to chose my next trip! In deed, they are the most complete overall!

@@danielbotta8702 Thanks! Will definitely try to post some more next ski season in the southern hemisphere!

june, july, august

Qué loco, ¿verdad? Me alegro que haya tanta nieve ahora. Espero que todos salgan a disfrutarlo. ¡Estaré allí en un mes!

Unfortunately, it's about a 3-4 hour drive because they're in two separate valleys off of Santiago and there's no direct road between them. So you have to drive back to Santiago from one resort to go to the other. 3-4 hours isn't that bad, though. I did it in August. But one thing to keep in mind is that on weekends and holidays, the road to Valle Nevado is downhill only in the afternoon, so starting around 12 pm or so, you cannot go up to Valle Nevado. So if you're coming from Portillo, do it early in the day.

Thanks! Of the two resorts, which do you recommend? My family is used to Copper Mountain etc type skiiing, but high school sports will not allow us to travel in the Northen Hemisphere winter right now so we want to take a ski trip in August. Thanks!

@@joemichelotti1 Both are much smaller than Copper, and Valle Nevado will be a lot more intermediate in nature than Copper. Portillo has more steep terrain than Valle Nevado, but the slopes are short and it's much smaller overall. It'll be probably be hard to find developed moguls at either resort. Portillo is probably the more unique experience because it's an all inclusive resort with hardly any lift lines and absolutely incredible scenery. But it's far more expensive. Valle Nevado has great scenery as well, and with the ability to ski over to La Parva and buy a lift ticket there, you can get closer to a Colorado-sized resort. Hope that helps!

Thanks! Love your channel. Not trying to be a bother, but have another question. What are your thoughts on Aregentina resorts? Larger? Better snow? Easier to acess? Or not?@@SkiBoyNY.

@@joemichelotti1 No bother at all! It's hard to find information on South American resorts. The largest resort in South America is Cerro Catedral in Argentina. But it's harder to get to than either Portillo or Valle Nevado because it requires a connecting flight within Argentina to Bariloche, unless you connect through Peru or somewhere else to Bariloche. The reason to do that would be that there are rarely flights to Bariloche from EZE, the international airport for Buenos Aires. So you have transfer an hour to the domestic airport. The snow at all of these resorts has been hit or miss the past 5 years, and Valle Nevado has had the most consistent coverage. Catedral has often had no snow at the bottom except for a few weeks. I wasn't there last year, but based on the webcam, it sometimes looked like they weren't even operating the upper lifts during the week. But when it's fully open, it's the largest. Of course, Valle Nevado, La Parva and El Colorado are all connected but on separate lift tickets. If you're willing to buy tickets for all three (Valle Nevado is on Ikon, so no additional purchase necessary if you have Ikon), then it's much larger than Catedral and larger than many Colorado resorts. But last year, El Colorado didn't have great snow, so it wouldn't have been worth it to buy that ticket. Las Lenas is another Argentine resort that's pretty well known, but it may be one of the hardest to get to. They have overnight buses with sleeper compartments (it's something like a 11 hour drive from Buenos Aires) or you might be able to find a charter flight. Incredible amount of snow last year and great options for advanced terrain. I haven't been there myself, so that's just what I've heard.

Yes, it's definitely like spring skiing now. I see there's some precip in the forecast early next week but it's a mix of rain and snow. Never can be sure about those forecasts. They called for rain my first day at Portillo and it was actually a light dusting of snow.