Supported by
At Chapelco in Argentina, Skiing, Steaks, Sun (and Few Crowds)
This modern resort in Patagonia is relatively undiscovered, but the slopes can be stunning. And it’s close to a charming town with great empanadas.
As we navigated our way out of the airport and onto a shuttle bus, we were surrounded by Brazilians and Argentines — not an American or European accent to be heard. This, for a North American, is part of the appeal of South American skiing: The experience is that of a world slightly tilted. There’s no English babble, and July and August are the best months for snow. I was here in the late North American summer with my partner, Alan, and an Argentine friend, Adrián, to explore the mountain sports resort of Chapelco, tucked into the Andes near the Chilean border in Patagonia.
Adrián, a snowboard fanatic who lives in Canada but comes to Chapelco regularly, usually for a week or more at a time, touts its virtues over other Argentina resorts. “It’s the largest skiable area that comes with a local town experience. Catedral is massive, Las Leñas is not as well organized. The rest are way smaller. For me, Chapelco is the closest it gets to the Forest Service ski areas in the U.S.”
For now, Chapelco is one of Argentina’s less-visited ski resorts, but that may be changing. In August 2017, the resort saw a record number of people — 7,012 in a single day — and the resort is constructing its own lodging, with ski-in, ski-out service. Tourism is on an upswing, but the slopes aren’t overcrowded and Federico Lopez Jallaguier, the resort’s marketing manager, told me that “Chapelco is the ski and snowboard center that has received the most investment in the last 10 years. It’s the most renovated of the Argentine centers in terms of chairlifts, snow-grooming and snow-making.”
The resort is up-to-date and modern, but the closest town, San Martín de los Andes, is appealingly wholesome and old-fashioned. The lakeside settlement has a distinctly European feel, with wooden cabins aiming their sharply angled roofs at the sky and a main street lined with chocolate shops and small cafes. But here glühwein is replaced by Malbec, and fondue supplanted by rounds of provolone roasted over a wood fire. Families flock here, not just from Argentina and Brazil, but from Chile, too (the man who outfitted us with boots and skis at the rental shop told me they almost never see North Americans), because the homey atmosphere is more child-friendly and welcoming than the party-all-night atmosphere and singles scene in Bariloche, a much larger ski town a few hours south. And although you can usually spot an Argentine soap star or two on the slopes, it’s much more common for an adult taking two children up the mountain to hand one off to you for the duration of the ride on the two-person lift.
We’d arrived too late in the day to go to the mountain, but we checked into our aparthotel. These are plentiful in San Martín, and make sense for groups — with small living rooms and kitchens, they are much more spacious than a traditional hotel. Ours was a cozy two-bedroom wooden cabin that included a carb-and-sugar-heavy breakfast of rolls, jam and medialunas, the traditional Argentine croissant. After unpacking, we headed to Piscis, a barbecue mecca that flaunted several lambs roasting in the window, each stretched out on two crossed bars and angled over a wood fire. A menu of trout and deer played up Patagonia’s traditional ingredients; we added a couple of bottles of Patagonian wine, and at 11 p.m., a man came in and played tango music on an accordion — aimed at tourists, sure, because tango is an urban pastime, not a Patagonian one, but something that the Brazilians in the restaurant vocally appreciated.
The next morning we piled into the car for the short journey to Chapelco. The resort is 11 miles from the town, a leisurely uphill drive that follows the curve of majestic, mountain-backed Lake Lácar, and ends in three miles of unpaved road. The sky was bright blue and, once we hopped off the chairlift, provided a brilliant background for the snow strewn across the Andes like tiger stripes. It remained spectacularly sunny for most of our trip. One afternoon I looked down from the lift to see a man in full gear, skis on but planted firmly in the snow, lying on his back with his hands behind his head taking a mid-run sunbath.
The slopes at Chapelco run the gamut — plenty of practice areas, some challenging midrange runs, and black diamonds that please adrenaline junkies, topping out at 6,500 feet above sea level and spread over 4,000 acres. The boundaries of the off-piste areas aren’t strongly enforced, and there are tracks everywhere left by boarders slicing through the ungroomed snow as if it were water. The forests are the most skiable of the Argentine resorts, the trees neatly corralled, with the occasional snowboarder swerving around and through. I skied the groomed beginner slopes a few times to warm up, then headed toward the red (Argentina uses the European system of classification; in the United States these would be blue) trails, pausing to snap photos of the lake down below and the Lanín Volcano in the distance — a view that made it hard, when facing a tricky run, to look where I was going rather than at the scenery. At one point, I almost skied into a tree. Red-faced and windblown and ready for a slower pace, I turned down the camino, a 3.3-mile service road that takes a long, leisurely path through the trees to the base of the mountain, crisscrossing marked runs as it winds its way down. It can fill up with beginners but it’s a fabulous slow ride that allows you to soak up the views and leaves you with all your bones and equipment intact.
Around 5 p.m. we got into the car and drove three-and-a-half hours to eat a steak. You might think this is too long but you’d be wrong and there’s not an Argentine in existence who would tell you so. Our aim was El Boliche de Alberto, a parrillada where the wood-fired steaks are deservedly famous — I’d had one two years before and had pestered Alan and Adrián to make the trek for another. The restaurant is in Bariloche, and the road south from San Martín skirts a series of seven lakes that are some of the most stunning scenery in Patagonia. The sun was setting as we drove, but the lakes — ringed by pines and native coihue trees and surrounded by mountains — were jaw-droppingly beautiful even in the fading light.
At our destination, crowded with people and warmed by the enormous fire, we picked up hefty, wooden-handled knives and dug into an ojo de bife (rib eye) capped with crispy fat and cooked to precisely the rare degree we wanted. Eating dinner in Argentina is an unhurried process, and we weren’t back on the road until 1 a.m. There wasn’t another car on the road, which was lightly coated in fresh snow. We rounded the dark curves with the high beams on; I sat in the back seat under the coats discarded by the others — the heat in our cheap rented Chevrolet Corsa didn’t reach past the front seat. There was no cell reception in between these ski towns and the lakes were hidden by fog; it was just the three of us and the snow and the occasional fox darting in front of the headlights.
The result of our midnight excursion was evident when we pulled into the resort the next morning. We noticed a deflated tire, pushed out of shape by a rim that had been damaged by a pothole. After the day’s skiing, we would drive it carefully back into town and to a small garage, where a man in his 70s would bang the rim back into shape with a hammer and charge us 80 pesos, the best bargain of the trip. Inflation in Argentina, a constant problem, meant that a dollar was worth around 17 pesos when we were there. Argentina’s not cheap, but the exchange rate helped keep costs down. And for overseas visitors, Argentina’s new rule — tourists don’t pay the 21 percent I.V.A. tax (V.A.T) on hotel rooms if they use a credit card issued abroad — is an added inducement.
Skilled skiers and riders can burn their way down the runs that shoot down from Cerro Escalonado, the highest point in the resort, far above the tree line. The views beyond are all rocky crags, deep bowls and untouched snow — areas that the resort may eventually develop, but which for now remain pristine. From here, the following day, we swooshed down a steep, treeless slalom crowded with snowboarders to the travesía baja. This .6-mile blue run streaks east along a steep drop-off that’s without the protection of trees, but this means sweeping mountain views. It finishes with a sharp dip that ends at the Pradera del Puma, a parador (a small restaurant). We added our skis and board to the collection and tramped in, collecting ceramic bowls of rustic roasted potatoes and lentil stew heavily fortified with meat, then pulled up chairs at the tables outside. The sun shone, James Brown played on the loudspeaker and we shared a couple of Coronas, just for the hell of it.
The final run of the trip was back down the gentle camino, which we dragged out as long as possible before joining the crowd filling the outdoor tables and chairs at the base for a quick pint of Patagonia I.P.A. from a mobile truck. The après ski here isn’t the raucous, hourslong scene of European resorts — the resort closes at 5 p.m. and at 6 clears out almost instantaneously, with everyone headed back to town for a shower and rest before dinner.
"We followed suit, sauntering over to Cala, a cheery, wooden-roofed pizza joint thronged with groups of snow-loving Porteños (what people from Buenos Aires are called) and locals, sinking pints of beer and stuffing themselves with the fabulous empanadas. In Argentina, the tradition of indicating an empanada’s filling by thumbing the dough closed in a particular pattern lives on: We ordered spinach and cheese and minced beef, followed by a hearty pie of pepperoni and fresh tomatoes that we couldn’t finish. If you’ve spent time in Buenos Aires, where locals have the anxiety levels of New Yorkers and about as much chill, you’d be as surprised as I was to see these Porteños laughing, drinking and utterly relaxed. It might have been the mountain air, the energy burned off on the slopes, the natural beauty of the area or the beer, but the town and the mountain had worked their magic.
Advertisement