We have only four spots left for the 2016 season and we’re offering them at a discounted price!

Week #9 – August 20-27th

Semi Private Guided Trip

• Sale Price – $10,000USD / skier
• Regular Price – $12,600USD / skier
• Full group of 4 required for this special
  

Winter has been incredible in Chile this season! We’re opening runs and peaks earlier than ever and the snow just keeps coming. We should have another 3 feet down in the next few days, book your trip now!

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It just won’t stop down here! Another nearly 6ft of snow this week! Lines are coming in weeks early this year and we are getting into new terrain daily.

Conditions are all time and spots are filling fast.

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We’re in the midst of another large El Niño spawned storm! We’re measuring the snow totals in feet and there’s more to come.

If you want the best ski conditions possible for your heli-skiing trip, this is the season!

We still have lots of openings in our heli-ski schedule for our trips in Chile and Argentina this summer, drop us a line and we can help you plan your trip today.

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A huge snowstorm rolled through the Andes mountains of Chile and Argentina in early June and dropped up to 10-feet of snow in 7-days.  This storm was the largest the region had seen since 1996 – that’s 20 years…

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It’s not even June yet and Powder Fever is setting in! It’s time to get excited for our upcoming season. Check out the article that Snow Brains posted on Powder South.

The Andes Mountain Range in South America is the longest mountain range on Earth.  It holds the highest mountains in world outside the Himalayas along with some of the best skiing and riding found anywhere.  Sky-scraping 23,000-foot peaks, lava-spewing volcanoes, trenching fjords, calving glaciers, llamas, penguins, and powder during our summer.  Lots and lots of powder.

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Our friend Tom Winter wrote a great piece on Powder South featured in The Boulder Weekly in April 2016.

The mountains are the spine of the continent. They run for thousands of miles, in places jagged and impassible, in others friendlier, with passes guarded by large volcanoes that vent steam and spit lava. These are empty landscapes. Traveled by few, buffeted by storms. Exotic, yes, but also welcoming and closer than you think.

It’s hard to think about skiing and powder days and cold feet and runny noses in the middle of July. But when the temperature in Boulder starts to kiss 100, then perhaps it’s time to think and plan and dream a bit. To consider the unlikely journey south — south to the snow of the Chilean Andes.

Read the entire article.

We have some great and exiting news for this upcoming season. The heli-ski season in South America is less than two months away, and POWDER SOUTH Heli-Ski Guides and Owners are hard at work making preparations for the upcoming season.

We just got over a meter of snow last week in the Andes and we have more snow coming! it is only April and predictions are looking very positive for Powder South this winter.

New lodge south of Santiago

New for 2016, we are operating out of the VIK Lodge for private heli-ski trips ONLY this first season due to the high end nature of these accommodations.

The lofty heights, scenic landscapes and futuristic designs will take you to another world.

Perched on a hill top in the midst of an 11,000 acre estate, VIK Lodge in Chile is the cutting-edge, James Bond-esque design masterpiece of Alexander Vik and his wife Carrie, along with renowned Architect Marcelo daglio. Hovering in your carbon fiber hammock-style bathtub in the VIK suite after skiing great powder all day long, you can gaze out across the Lodge own private vineyard, over the rolling foothills of the Millahue Valley and out towards the snow-capped peaks you have just skied!

New Terrain Accessed from the VIK Lodge

We skied a bit south of our previous operation in vast and overwhelming great terrain,where we have access to thousands of hectares of unlimited terrain, most of this terrain is still  unexplored, so you will be doing first descents and naming runs! This is an amazingly vast mountain region offering a wide variety of perfect heli-skiing terrain. Every run is surrounded by a breathtaking backdrop of 5,000-meter peaks.

We have the benefit of a maritime snowpack, which is light and dry due to the high altitude, synonymous with champagne powder at its best. Snow accumulation comes from the Pacific Ocean, a mere 100 miles (160 km) west of the Andes. Flying conditions are best during winter due to an almost zero thermal reduction, which keeps the cumulus clouds away and leads to an abundance of clear days.

Historically Powder South average is 5 days of skiing out of 6 days in a week of skiing.

Well, it was incredible while it lasted. The 2015 heli-skiing season has ended for us at POWDER SOUTH, and we want to take this opportunity to thank everyone who joined us in Chile and Argentina for one of the best winters in years. Late this season, that list even included world-renowned big-wave surfer Laird Hamilton, who, not surprisingly, can rip a snowboard as well.

2015 was highlighted by a handful of enormous storms that dumped multiple meters of snow on the central Andes. If you were here, you know it was one of the best sustained powder stretches on record. And now for the best part: meteorologists are predicting four more El Niño winters for South America, so chances are good that the conditions will be similar through 2019. Let’s hear it for Ullr!

Beyond the snow, 2015 was a special year for us as we opened the Uco Valley base in Argentina. The lure of unskied lines had us salivating, and although we had to fly farther and higher than anticipated sometimes, the reward was true exploration. Next year, we plan to add more hours of flight time to the Uco Valley heli packages to reflect the unique terrain around our base lodge.

On a related note, we have some exciting news to share: We are in the process of finalizing two more bases south of the Central Andes (but not too far south), one in Chile and one in Argentina. Each is surrounded by spectacular skiing and snowboarding potential. In light of their pending addition, if you book a trip for next season, we will allow you to move your trip to one of the new locations later, if you wish to explore the new terrain.

A quick update on prices:

They are staying the same for now — if you book a 2016 trip, you will pay the same as you did last year. That won’t be the case forever (there will be about a 10 percent increase soon), so now is a good time to save some money if you want to fly with us next season.

Until next time…

That’s it from us at POWDER SOUTH. Thank you again for a wonderful season, and we hope to see you next year! And feel free to send us photos or stories from your experience this winter, at powder@heliskiguides.com.