After a prolonged closure brought by enormous snowfall totals, road access to Ski Portillo is reopening this weekend, allowing the general public to make the drive from Chile’s capital, Santiago, into the mountains.
Ski Portillo announced the opening on social media on Friday, writing, “the border crossing will be open to all vehicles — hotel guests, skiers and day visitors alike.” Just east of Ski Portillo, the road passes into Argentina.
“We can’t wait to see you all up here. The snow is incredible,” Ski Portillo continued, noting that the opening applies to Saturday and Sunday.
Los Libertadores Pass officially closed on July 14 as a headline-grabbing storm slammed into South America, dropping more than 100 inches of snow. Ski resorts got buried. And in the lowlands, Chile faced intense rainfall and flooding.
POWDER checked in with a member of the Ski Portillo crew, Alec Blossom, around the height of the system last month. He’s spent years returning to the ski resort to work as a guide and instructor, and hadn’t seen anything like it. Effectively stuck in the mountains, they managed to do some skiing when it was safe but also spent lots of time shoveling.
“I think it’s pretty abnormal for everybody,” he said.
Since then, Portillo has managed to bring some skiers to the mountain via helicopter and up the road, making for some tantalizing South American powder posts on social media. The resort did recently note that access was for hotel guests only, though.
Portillo is somewhat unique in that, unlike many major destinations, it’s small and isolated, without a sprawling base village. Hotel guests who buy multi-day ski stays with lift tickets and food included make up the vast majority of visitors, rather than day-trippers. It’s sometimes compared to a cruise ship in the sky.
Even as Portillo hosted some skiers and snowboarders, the extended closure prompted ACESKI, an organization that represents Chilean ski resorts, to speak out and express concerns about impacts to the winter tourism industry.
“Chile must learn to live with the snow and not be paralyzed by it,” the organization said in a release, asking that the Chilean government create a National Mountain Management Policy and create a group to review current protocols and assess new ones.
Portillo’s road announcement follows the news that Los Libertadores Pass had partially reopened for truck traffic on August 18 from Argentina to Chile, marking the end of a 34-day closure, as reported by DataPortuaria.
The snow and the possibility of another road closure haven’t passed, though. Another storm cycle could bring feet of snow to Portillo around the middle of next week, according to OpenSnow.
