Bariloche

The latest adventure was in Bariloche Argentine on Lake Nahuel Huapi. Three other friends and I took a 22 hour bus ride through Argentina. Woke up to the ground starting to rise into mountains, and lakes pouring between them. The first day there was gorgeous, not a cloud in the sky, and the mountains reflected clearly in the lake that sits at the edge of Bariloche. The second day we trekked to Cerro Catedral for some major skiing. We pulled up to a muddy base of a mountain, and ash covered sky. Yet, that day was clear enough to see the endless skyline of the Andes behind the mountain. This was on the top of the ski run Nubes, which means clouds. For in fact we were skiing above the clouds, and we were above the ash that hung in the air from Puyehue the volcano in Chile that has been erupting since December. Although the bottom of the mountain looked like a joke, the top was fabulous, especially after a few days of fresh snow. People said its like riding a chair into heaven there because you go into the clouds on the chair lift to get to the top. All you can see is the chair in front of you fading with every white partical of the cloud that surrounds it. That is how i would see going to heaven, with my skis on ready to ride. One of the days we decided not to go skiing, and to see some glaciers. We rented a car, and drove up to the boarder of Chile to Mount Tronador, and did just that. The real adventure of that day was the four of us parking the car and running off into the forest. We hopped 2 fences, crossed 3 rivers, walked through an iron swamp, walked through a swamp swamp, walked though a corridor of giant cat tails, all to get a closer look at a waterfall. The best part was walking back though all of that to the car. the last day in Bariloche we had about a foot of new snow. The top of the mountain was closed due to wind, but we went anyways. This day there was snow on the bottom of the mountain and the top promised more. We hiked up Nubes, and had first fresh tracks to this powder, and had many many more that day. But they were right about the wind. On the last chair ride up to as far as we could go, the chair stopped and swayed as we sat in it. An Argentine lady sat there perfectly calm, and told us about how last year 6 chair came of the line, and everyone broke there knees and legs. the earth was white with blizzard, and the ground look like an ocean rippling with snow. She said through the wind, "I think that it was this chair that the chair came off of as well." As she said that the wind picked up and the largest gust of the day blew through the mountain, my skis were being forced behind me on the chair there was nothing but white around us, and I had to hold on the the bar just to keep from slipping out of the chair. When we got of the chair we decided to ski down, and call it a fabulous day.