By Lisa Laughlin
Cover photo courtesy of Susan McBurney
As the closing day of ski season at Mount Bachelor neared in May of 2024, ski friends Rebecca Hurlen Patano and Susan McBurney booked their rooms for Ski Portillo, an iconic resort in Chile. The goal: get on skis during summer and experience legendary terrain in the Andes Mountains. The two packed their gear and left Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, and Spokane, Wash., in mid-August.
Both women are passionate, lifelong skiers in their early 60s who have hit many of the usual ski bum milestones, including 100+ day ski seasons. But neither had skied the Andes. When I spoke with them at my dining room table after their trip, there was one word they both used to describe the experience: the scale. The scale of the mountains was incomparable.
McBurney and Hurlen Patano spent a week at Ski Portillo, a bright yellow lodge with wooden accents perched at 9,500 feet among some of the most dramatic mountains on earth. Highly sought by international skiers and World Cup athletes in training, Portillo is unique in its old-world style that makes the ski experience the main focus. There are zero televisions, and not much else to do other than ski and chat with others who booked some time in the middle of snowy nowhere. Which is precisely the point.
“Portillo is magic. It’s skiers’ magic,” says Hurlen Patano, who brought a mini snow globe adorned with the Chilean flag and bottles of wine to her interview with me. She thinks of Ski Portillo as a magic snow globe of its own.
McBurney, who had wanted to travel to Chile ever since learning our seasons were reversed as a grade-schooler, says she bawled when she first saw the mountains on the drive up from Santiago. The van driver pulled over while the women tried to explain they were happy tears. Despite a language barrier, he nodded; he understood how the impact of the mountains could hit the first time.
The women soon found themselves skiing above treeline looking at glaciers in one of the most stunning mountain ranges in the ski world. They had fog on day one, but clear weather after that, and even caught a powder day. They skied into Tio Bob’s, a ski-in bar at the top of the world. They rode the unique and unnerving slingshot-style Roca Jack surface lift. They skied off-piste. They chewed cacao leaves to mitigate headaches from high altitude.
In addition to Portillo, the friends skied at the Valle Nevado resort out of Santiago. They soaked in hot springs in the chilly Atacama Desert at 8,000 feet. They enjoyed pisco sours, the national drink. They listened to the music of many languages in the hot tub after a day on skis. They were surprised by a flock of Andean condors during a hike in Patagonia. They found generous people, excellent food, and a community connected by a love of skiing. Both women said they woke up this summer thinking again about Ski Portillo.
“Looking at the Andes, being in the Andes, is a great experience that seeps into our body and mind,” says Hurlen Patano. “Just looking at the rock formations, colors, and glaciers and the extreme steepness. It was life changing and mesmerizing. And we got to ski it!”
McBurney continued on solo after Chile for six days of skiing in the Argentine Patagonia near Bariloche. There she found more tree skiing, lower elevations, and smaller resorts. She gelled with a group of seven strangers and two local guides for a highlight experience. “It felt more culturally connected to me, as a ski destination,” she says. Her group visited three lift-served resorts and their guides showed them their favorite backcountry ski spots.
McBurney thought that maybe once she went on her dream trip, she’d be satiated. But she found the opposite to be true. “There’s something about that country and its stunning diversity and the styles of food from north to south,” she says. “I will go back.”
While Japan is also on Hurlen Patano’s ski list, the pair loved the opportunity the Andes presented to ski in an incredible place while the Inland Northwest sweated through a heat wave. What skier wouldn’t?
Lisa Laughlin is the managing editor of Out There Outdoors. This fall, she will be running the trails in Riverside State Park, looking forward to the changing brush and calling geese.
