Forget NZ or Japan: here is your next skiing destination
Space is guaranteed, lift lines simply don’t exist and there was too much snow this year.
‘I thought we were all going to die,” a voice floats up from under the table. I can hear Henry Purcell, but I can’t see him. The 90-year-old American owner of Chile’s Portillo ski resort is swapping his sneakers for ski boots, his head hunched over the buckles as he recounts the day in 1971 when Cuban leader Fidel Castro arrived unannounced for lunch.
After boasting about what little challenge the surrounding 6000m-plus peaks would pose to a climber of his calibre, Castro sat down to dine at the resort’s grand Hotel Portillo. Shortly after Castro rose to leave, a young waiter named Juan Beiza noticed he had left his pistol on his chair, so rushed outside to return it, waving the weapon after Castro in a manner that can only be described as ill-advised. He, along with Purcell and everyone else nearby, came within a whisker of being gunned down by Castro’s security guards.
If you doubt the veracity of the story, you can always ask Beiza yourself. Now the restaurant maitre d’, he’s still here after 55 years. That’s not unusual at Chile’s oldest ski resort, where the staff are as loyal as the skiers, who keep returning to the canary-yellow hotel on the lake, which is celebrating its 75th anniversary.
Portillo is a boutique resort impervious to the passage of time. Cradled in the Chilean Andes, the hotel sits on the shore of the shimmering Laguna del Inca, just 23km from Aconcagua, South America’s highest mountain. The Argentinian border is just a few kilometres away, and a chairlift crosses the main trucking route between the two countries, giving skiers a scarcely believable view of semi-trailers groaning around the tightly coiled switchbacks that twist up the vertiginous valley. The drivers toot their horns at the skiers floating above; skiers respond by dropping snowballs on the trucks.
Regular storm cycles dump an insane amount of snow at Portillo, typically followed by a week of blue skies. This year’s season opening was delayed when more than 5m of snow fell in June, a problem Australian ski resorts can only dream of.
A large part of Portillo’s charm is how little has changed since the Purcell family purchased the hotel from the Chilean government in 1961, engaging the set designer from the sitcom I Love Lucy to give it a spruce-up. The leather chairs in the bar are 1962 originals, set around sturdy timber tables that have withstood decades of tabletop dancing and toppled pisco sours. The leather wall panels in the restaurant meanwhile date to the hotel’s opening in 1949. Lift tickets are printed by hand and worn on string round your neck. The place truly is a time capsule. And despite its age, nothing feels dated, with every element of the experience exuding eternal elegance.
Skiing at Portillo is often likened to being on a cruise ship (although this ship docks in the same port every day). Being essentially just one hotel, it has the feel of a private ski club rather than a regular resort. With a maximum of 450 guests (and about as many staff), faces quickly become familiar. You sleep under the same roof, drink at the same bar, soak up sunset in the same lakeside hot pool. Regulars return every year, often to the same table and the same waiter, and to ski lessons with the same instructor, who’ll then join them later for dinner. Snowstorms frequently cut off the only road in, adding to the feeling of remoteness. One year, the 400-plus guests had to be flown in by helicopter. Whatever happens at Portillo, you’re all in it together.
That sense of exclusiveness extends to the slopes, where space is guaranteed and lift lines simply don’t exist. The skiable terrain is a relatively modest 500ha, but at Portillo it’s about quality, not quantity. I start each day skiing the endlessly undulating Juncalillo run, which I often have entirely to myself, waiting for the sun to warm the snow on the famous Roca Jack, a 300m powder-laden plunge down an avalanche chute.
Portillo is home to the world’s only va et vient (French for “come and go”) lifts that slingshot four to five skiers at a time up the steepest slopes at alarming speed. Expert and advanced skiers can enjoy an abundance of side-country and hike-to terrain, including a hair-raising boot-pack traverse to the legendary Super C couloir. Heli-skiing whisks adrenaline-seeking skiers to pristine powder stashes, and is priced per run, making it almost obscenely affordable.
A fantastic ski school caters to all abilities, and there’s even a weekly slalom competition, with a prizegiving ceremony held in the venerable living room, amid the leather booth seats, antique chests, oil paintings and grand fireplace. The ski instructors are simply part of the gang, mingling with guests at the bar, and sharing the dancefloor in the grotto-like disco. If you feel like kicking on, you’re welcome to pop over to the staff bar, La Posada, in an area known affectionately as Siberia.
Pick of the hotel rooms is a top-floor corner suite. A lake view costs extra but is worth it for the pure pleasure of pulling back the curtains each morning. There’s a smattering of alternative lodgings, including the budget Inca Lodge, with shared dorms and meals served in the hotel cafeteria. Lakeside chalets sleep up to eight in four bedrooms; a popular option for larger groups.
Henry Purcell wins the battle with his buckles and is ready to hit the slopes. I join him on the Las Lomas chairlift then try to keep up as the nonagenarian breezes back down under the South American sun, as he’s done every day of every winter for 63 years, as ageless and graceful as the ski resort he’s so perfectly curated.
In the know
Ski Portillo is 2½ hours’ drive from Santiago International Airport, serviced by direct flights from Sydney and Melbourne on Qantas and LATAM Airlines. From $US1500 a person for Inca Lodge and $US3400 for Hotel Portillo; suites from $US4350; includes seven nights’ accommodation, eight days of skiing, all meals and hotel activities. Alcoholic drinks are extra.
Ricky French travelled to Chile at his own expense and was a guest of Ski Portillo.
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