Alec Blossom tends to treat South American snow forecasts with skepticism.
As a longtime instructor and guide at one of Chile’s best-known ski resorts, Portillo, he said promising systems can always disappear or shrink before they make landfall.
Earlier this month, that was how he felt as headlines and social media pages began detailing what, supposedly, was going to be an enormous cycle in South America. Just 100-plus inches of snow, no big deal.
“We’re kind of looking at that forecast, going like, ‘Ah, you know, maybe something happens, but it’s not going to be this crazy thing,” Blossom said. “And then sure enough, this time it absolutely was.”
No kidding. Portillo and other Chilean mountains got slammed. At Blossom’s workplace, the seven-day total read, as of Friday, July 24, an eye-watering 193 inches, or about as much as Portillo usually tallies during an entire season. While the storm cycle may have peaked a few days ago, the forecasts call for continued snowfall throughout next week. It just keeps coming.
Blossom, who’s spent ten seasons working at Portillo, hasn’t seen anything like it. He remembered similarly intense, shorter storms, but the duration, this time, stands out.
“I think it’s pretty abnormal for everybody,” he said.
Perched high in a mountain valley northeast of Chile’s capital, Santiago, Portillo is small and isolated, without a sprawling base village like some other mountains. Thanks to its weeklong, all-inclusive ski packages and iconic yellow lodge, some compare it to a cruise ship in the sky.
“You get the same batch of people for a full week, and people kind of get to know each other,” said Blossom.
But with the intense snow and ensuing avalanche risk, the local highway department closed the winding roads to Portillo earlier this month. The resort hasn’t been able to open as usual since July 14, according to a recent letter from its general manger. In a social media post, Portillo’s team recently went as far as asking people to stop doing snow dances. There is, after all, such a thing as too much powder.
The current conditions make “it difficult to know when we’ll have an opportunity to resume ground or air access to the ski resort,” the letter continued, adding that should anything change, Portillo will “provide timely updates through our official channels.”
In other words, Blossom and his fellow employees are waiting it out. To kill time, they’ve been playing games. Blossom, when we spoke over the phone on Friday morning, noted an ongoing Catan match across the living room. The card game Karma has proven popular.
Other diversions include watching movies and, for Blossom, cheekily using his body to measure the snow’s depth with units called “Advanced Low Efficiency Calculation for Snow,” or ALECS.
Blossom added that Portillo, of course, has folks dedicated to measurements with weather stations and study plots. “But,” he continued, “for measuring the ALECS levels, it became fun certainly to just start throwing ourselves into snowbanks and making guesses and speculations.”
That’s not to say Blossom’s been slacking, though. When feet of snow show up, somebody has to get the shovels.
“We’ve just been joking that we’re professional shovelers at this point,” Blossom said. “We’ve probably all moved over a ton of snow.”
Alec Blossom
They’ve also been able to do a bit of skiing when it’s safe. While much of Portillo’s terrain is exposed to overhead avalanche hazards, Blossom explained, they’ve lapped some runs lower on the mountain. He said Conejo, a little two-seater near the lodge, tends to be the lift of choice during big storms because it’s largely separated from avalanche terrain by a ditch.
And yes, that skiing, so far, has been good. While the snow has varied in density, the arrival of lighter powder made for some nice turns recently. Blossom called it real “snorkel territory.”
But what’s most exciting—and, probably, harder to predict—is what Portillo will look like once the resort can officially reopen. Blossom offered a tease, noting that some lines, which can go entire seasons without filling in, already look skiable.
That marks a remarkable departure from the start of Portillo’s season, which began with a delay and barren slopes. As Blossom put it, though, when you drop “10 to 15 feet of snow on top of rock, a lot of things become possible.”
Related: One Man Is Preserving Freeskiing’s History, and It’s All Online
