August 24,2007 Cerro Bayo, Argentina

We left Bariloche at 9 AM and arrived at the access road to the ski area at 10:30AM. Although the access road is only 6km long, it took us (and the locals) 30 minutes to travel 3.6 miles. The potholed road is near Villa La Angostura, one of the more affluent and touristy towns in Argentina. At the end of the 3.6 mile ‘road from hell’ is a small gravel parking area that charges 4ARP (1.33USD) to park. Lift ticket prices were the same as at Catedral - $35 mid season rate. It was snowing lightly and visibility was flat. There are 7 lifts with a combination of doubles, singles and pomas. The chairs were all old vintage. The chair seats were short and you had to take off your pack to sit/clutch onto the chair. The terrain was a nice mix of trails in the trees and open slopes up high. Rather than a base lodge, there were 10-15 separate small chalets, run by separate vendors, for toilets, coffee, desserts, restaurant, ski instruction, ski rental, etc. - a rather unique base area. After a couple of hours of skiing in limited visibility on nice groomers and chunky ungroomed, we packed up and started towards Chile. Bayo is a small ski area that has a nice mix of terrain. There appears to be some good sidecountry terrain available but we did not have the visibility or snow conditions to travel beyond the boundaries. You could spend a day here and still return to Bariloche.

We topped off the gas tank in Angostura where it was .70/liter versus 1.40/liter in Chile. Crossing the border is a 1-2 hour experience. First you stop at Argentine (AR) customs to register that the vehicle you are driving will return to AR and is yours or a rental with proper papers (VERY important, you can’t cross without them). After clearing AR customs, you ascend the snow covered pass and descend toward Chilean customs. There you do the vehicle thing, go through passport control and inspection of the vehicle contents. The Chilean side is more organized and goes a lot quicker. Between the two checkpoints is a beautiful mountain pass that may be plowed, is narrow and filled with truck and vehicles that are not ‘mountain or snow smart’. There are no shoulders, so passing stalled vehicles on blind curves is common. It is a memorable event. Once down to 1100 feet, we turned south to Aquas Calientes thermals where we rented an A-frame cabana. We forgot our 2 previous cabana experiences in 2005. That cozy wood-burning stove sucks 98% of the heat right up the stove pipe. We enjoyed a soak in the thermal pool and had one of the best hot dog dinners of our life. We went to bed with a fully stoked stove and 4 blankets apiece. By morning, we had burned all of our wood allotment and it had snowed during the night and was still cold. We went out for a warm breakfast and discovered that we were still on AR time, not CL time where it was only 7:30AM; so back to our cabana where we huddled over the stove waiting for the restaurant to open. We attempted to ski Antillanca, but after driving 3km on a narrow snow-covered dirt road we decided that it was not feasible to drive another 15km in our front-wheel drive Chevy Corsa wagon– all of the vehicles passing us were large 4WD SUVs with high clearance. Although Antillanca is a small ski hill, it provides access to touring to Volcan Casablanca which was my real goal. The key is to have good weather for road access and touring visibility.

Photo 1 – Cerro Bayo sign
Photo 2 - View of top of ski area
Photo 3 – Single chair