Skiing, on a Volcano?!?!

This weekend I was offered the opportunity to travel to Antuco with a friend to spend the weekend doing all sorts of outdoorsy activities. Antuco isn't so far away, about 3hrs away which is short by Chilean standards, and is home to another quite large volcano. The plan was that my friend would teach me to ski. This winter there has been very little snow in that area, so we were hoping there would be at least some snow for us to mess around in. We arrived at around midnight on Friday and got some rest for the day ahead, sleeping in the truck. When we woke up we were disappointed to see very little snow. We decided to make the most of the day anyway and we managed to fit 3 hikes into the day. The first was what I thought was going to be a pretty tranquil hike around the lake, boy was I wrong... The path had been carved into the side of the hill by the military many many years ago to connect two military bases. This meant that many parts of the path had disappeared completely in landslides, which meant we had to do a lot of sketchy traverses on very steep slopes on precariously unstable rock. We made it as far as we could and came across a series of abandoned mine shafts and tunnels, of course it'd be rude not to go and explore right? Inside one of the pitch black tunnels we came across a door, this door led into a really creepy bunker with various rooms. Goodness knows what it was built for, to be honest I'd rather not think about it...

We then did a second walk which took us to the Río Laja, a grade 4+ river that is paddleable. We had to do that walk of course, if there is any opportunity to scout a new river, I always jump at the chance. It was a nice, pleasant and easy walk with lots of change of scenery, going from roaring waterfalls to dense forest.

In the afternoon we decided to strap the skis to my rucksack and hike up the volcano to find the snow. As you can see from the photos, the snow was quite a way up. We actually ended up trudging about half way up the volcano with all the ski gear to reach the start of the snow. We spent a good hour messing around with the skis, I actually find I picked it up really quickly. It's definitely something that I'd like to get good at next winter. The descent was a lot quicker than the ascent for sure and I slept like a log that night!

The Sunday we did a bit more of a strenuous walk, we hiked up to the plateau and then scrambled off-path up to the summit of one of the mountains. The path was really steep and the main issue was that the rocks were all so loose. It was a battle trying to take one step forwards only to slide 5 steps backwards, but we made it to the top in the end and were rewarded with an amazing view of the lake. I always forget that it tends to be much more precarious descending really steep ground than ascending... It took us a while to find a safe, or safeish, spot to descend and we went running down the sandy slope, using our feet like skis to control the descent. It was an absolutely amazing weekend, and it was nice to be able to do some proper exercise out in the mountains again!


Oh, and this week was also my birthday. 21st in Chile, what an experience! Some of the highlights of my week include coming home on Wednesday to find that Tía Ceci, the lady that comes to clean our flat everyday, had prepared loads of fresh empanadas for me and my flatmates as well as mote con huesillo (a sweet peach based drink with a dried peach and boiled wheat). It was a lovely surprise to come home to a proper Chilean style birthday meal. I also went out for drinks with a few friends out here. The teachers at INACAP also surprised me one afternoon with some pastries and a Chilean rendition of 'Happy Birthday' , which was lovely. Nadir also secretly prepared a video with my best mates from Cambridge of loads of friends wishing me well, being so far away from the people you love can be difficult at times, but I love hearing from people back home so this has been a really great week for me!