Cerro Escalonado Tour

As promised I will be sharing pictures from today's destination, Cerro Escalonado next to the Chapelco Ski Resort. I have to admit that I thoroughly enjoyed myself as i put in the second half of the boot pack trail.

But first, take a look at the home of my dear Argentinean friend, Claudio. He hosted me at his home this year during my visit to San Martin de Los Andes.

Below a new addition to Chapelco ski resort, designed by Miguel Rigetti the patrol director.

 Julian, one of SnowProject owners, appreciating the NEW avalanche danger sign.

Today the avalanche danger is moderate (3) due warm temperatures and a weak layer buried 25 cm down.

Below a picture from Cerro Escalonado Summit. C4, another touring destination can be seen to the right in the background.

The next picture shows Puyehue, the volcano responsible for the recent eruption and ash deposition in Chile and Argentina.

A much better picture, during a low ash/pollution day taken a month ago is included below.

The bowls behind Cerro Escalonado.

Views toward Chapelco Ski resort from the top of Cerro Escalonado.

More views from Cerro Escalonado, looking to the East, with Gran Chapelco Peak to the right in the background. The ski resort was named after this peak, although the resort is NOT located on this mountain. Too bad! The resort is located to the left (North East) of the middle ridge. To the South, the back bowls can be seen.

After descending, Cerro Escalonado can bee seen above us.

We went back up determined to ski Chapelco, South aspect back bowls.

The next picture shows Cesi (Erik Sweet wife) in the forground, with Cerro Escalonado in the middle/background. Cesi is waiting for us to finish evaluation the snowpack stability.

Erik checking the snowpack.

Test results were not encouraging (CTEQ2 25 cm down NSF 1.5 cm, ECTN), and we decided not to ski the steep and large south bowls.

The next two pictures show the top 25 cm layer, which appears inverted in the picture. The 3-4 cm of pencil hard crust was undermined by a thin layer of 1.5 cm of fairly advanced NSF.

As we descended back to our car, we ran into cattle above the snow line! Only in Argentina.

Chago

More Pictures from Las Leñas

We are getting ready to go ski touring this morning. The plan is to ski Patagonia corn at the Escalonado and C4 peaks near Chapelco. However, I thought I might drop few more pictures from Las Leñas that I never got to post due to the very busy schedule.

Views to the West, toward the Andes crest, and to the Chilean border direction. Notice the active volcano with plumes. We took these two picture during one of the ski tours days to el Collarcito with the AVI L2 students.

Next, two pictures with views of el Collar and El Collarcito lines.

Pictures of more wild terrain toward Las Leñas Peak. These pictures were taken during our ski tour to the Office area for the final day of the AVI L2 course.

Below a picture fas I proceeded to snap a photo of the brush after wich the Las Leñas is know for. Las Leñas is the name of this yellow colored brush.

Avi L2 Students doing snow pit work.

Chago (me, with the yellow coat) talking to students about CT tests.

Students looking at snow crystals.

Level 2 students are expected to be competent users of SWAG annotations with the Blue Book.

Once more, Chago again talking about snow pit test results. My youngest son, Fritz (red coat) is sitting in the background.

Students learning about how to create temperature profile with an IR thermometer.

And of course, AVI L2 students had to meet the expected minimum search times for single (less than 3 minutes from search start to probe contact) and multiple burials (less than 7 minutes for 2 transceiver exercise).

Some of you might notice the BCA logo and equipment on this pictures. They have been supporting SnowProject avalanche education in Argentina - Thanks Bruce and Steve!

It might appear that I was leisurely skiing and touring during my trip to Argentina, but these pictures serve as my evidence that we were working hard in evangelizing snow science and safe travel with my Argentinean friends.

Later today I will be posting more pictures from today's tour.