Comfortably Numb
I’m anxious about going to Chile.
Felice always believes she’s going to forget how to ski. If we don’t go for a couple of months, she gets nervous. That all her progress is going to disappear. And after lamenting this on the phone between our two trips to Mammoth in June, I opined we could always go to Portillo. I meant it as a joke. But, without my knowledge, Felice ran with it. Called her travel agent. And on our drive up to go skiing the last weekend in June confronted me with the e-mail. If we booked that afternoon, we’d be guaranteed a room. After that…
And with a sense of urgency goading us on, we committed, just like that. And now the time has finally come. We’re leaving on Friday.
Portillo is where they held the World Ski Championships in 1966. Where Jean Claude Killy broke through, where he demonstrated his dominance. It’s only ninety miles from Santiago, but it takes you two and a half hours to get there. For there are enough switchbacks on the road there to give Chuck Yeager motion sickness. And when you get there… You’re completely above treeline. Bunking at 9,200 feet. Higher than any lodge in the United States. You’re surrounded by jagged peaks. And a lake, which hopefully is frozen, so you can ski across it.
Oh, there’s only one hotel. With as many employees as guests, 450. And four meals a day. And a pool. And a disco. And in attendance are the greatest skiers in the world, catching their summer turns.
So, we’ve got to fly to Dallas.
At first our turnaround was under an hour. But I became concerned, and we extended it to eighty minutes. I’m not as worried about myself as I am about my equipment. End up in Chile without your ski gear and you don’t have many options. This isn’t Vail, other than this one hotel and the mountains, there’s NOTHING THERE! I’m carrying my ski boots on the plane. They’re the one absolutely necessary piece of equipment.
And from Dallas, we fly nine and a half hours south to Santiago. To winter.
Although it hasn’t completely been winter the past week. As a matter of fact, it didn’t even get below freezing today. The mercury soared beyond sixty. And I’ve got no problem with that, I love skiing in the corn/slush. It’s just that… There’s almost nobody there and they groom very little and what’s ungroomed… I once spent a week in Jackson Hole in April. It snowed for four days, and then the sun came out brightly, the temperatures were akin to those in Portillo, the snow set up, the slopes were almost unskiable. You see the mountain is so vast, it never got packed out. And Portillo isn’t quite as large a ski area as Jackson, but with so few skiers there, what will the off-piste snow be like? Oh, they groom the easier stuff. But the stuff between the rocks, the couloirs, the open snowfields you go to Portillo for…what will THOSE be like?
And if I’d gone to Portillo when I originally desired, when I was a teenager, I’m sure I would have torn the place apart. But older, and not having the luxury of skiing every day, my timing isn’t as razor sharp. How many risks do you take? You don’t want to be lame, in front of all the experts there. And you don’t want to disappoint yourself.
Then again, it could dump.
Last year it snowed so hard that guests couldn’t get from Santiago to the resort for three days. Nearly a hundred inches fell.
The weather report doesn’t portend such a storm this year, then again, it is supposed to precipitate the day we arrive, according to accuweather.com. Will we be able to get there? Never mind get out, after the mandatory week stay.
And my OCD is raging. I’m gonna FORGET something. You know how they always say you can buy everything you need on the road? Well, not at THIS place.
Oh, I know how you do this. You just hang in there, you put one foot in front of the other, eventually the day comes, you get there. Your anxiety reduces. You have a great time.
But for now, I’m here and Portillo’s there. In South America. A whole continent away.
